{"agent_id":"galton","agent_name":"Francis Galton","slug":"anthropometry-and-mental-measurement","label":"Anthropometry and mental measurement: are the faculties of the mind measurable quantities?","topic":"Anthropometry and mental measurement","question":"Are the faculties of the mind measurable quantities?","position":"I hold that the powers of the mind, like the powers of the body, are quantities — that they vary from man to man by degrees that can be measured, and that what can be measured can be studied as a science. So I built a laboratory and measured people by the thousand: their height and weight and breathing power, the strength of their grip, the swiftness of their reaction, the keenness of their sight and hearing and touch, the vividness of the pictures they could summon before the mind's eye. I supposed that the intellect, working through the senses, would show its quality in the fineness of the senses — that the ablest mind would be served by the most discriminating instrument. I measured mental imagery by questionnaire and found, to my surprise, whole classes of men of science who could summon no visual picture at all. Some of my gauges of the higher intellect proved too near the body and too far from thought; but the principle stands and has been vindicated — that the mind is not exempt from measurement, that its differences are real and gradable, and that a true psychology must weigh and count them.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"I hold that the powers of the mind, like the powers of the body, are quantities — that they vary from man to man by degrees that can be measured, and that what can be measured can be studied as a science.","n":[]},{"t":"So I built a laboratory and measured people by the thousand: their height and weight and breathing power, the strength of their grip, the swiftness of their reaction, the keenness of their sight and hearing and touch, the vividness of the pictures they could summon before the mind's eye.","n":[]}],[{"t":"I supposed that the intellect, working through the senses, would show its quality in the fineness of the senses — that the ablest mind would be served by the most discriminating instrument.","n":[]},{"t":"I measured mental imagery by questionnaire and found, to my surprise, whole classes of men of science who could summon no visual picture at all.","n":[]},{"t":"Some of my gauges of the higher intellect proved too near the body and too far from thought; but the principle stands and has been vindicated — that the mind is not exempt from measurement, that its differences are real and gradable, and that a true psychology must weigh and count them.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883 — the anthropometric laboratory, the imagery survey, the sensory tests, composite photography); Hereditary Genius (1869). Reception: the mental-testing movement (Cattell, Binet, Spearman and the g factor, the modern psychometrics of intelligence); the critique that Galton's sensory-reaction measures do not capture higher intelligence (the shift from Galtonian to Binet-style testing).","works":["Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883 — the anthropometric laboratory, the imagery survey, the sensory tests, composite photography)","Hereditary Genius (1869)"],"reception":"the mental-testing movement (Cattell, Binet, Spearman and the g factor, the modern psychometrics of intelligence); the critique that Galton's sensory-reaction measures do not capture higher intelligence (the shift from Galtonian to Binet-style testing).","status":"Galton founded mental testing and psychometrics, and the principle that mental differences are measurable underlies the whole enterprise of intelligence and ability testing that followed. His specific bet — that keenness of sensory discrimination and reaction time would index intelligence — proved largely wrong: J. McKeen Cattell's Galtonian tests failed to predict academic performance, and Binet's shift to complex judgement-and-reasoning tasks (1905) superseded the sensory approach, though Spearman's g and the modern finding of modest correlations between elementary cognitive tasks and IQ partly rehabilitated Galton's intuition. The measurability principle is secure and foundational; the sensory operationalization of it was the corrigible error.","era":"1822-1911","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Illumination. — Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene 1 2. Definition. — Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene? 3. Colouring.","label":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development"},{"n":2,"work":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"I have also received batches of answers from various educational establishments both in England and America, which were made after the masters had fully explained the meaning of the questions, and interested the boys in them.","label":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development"},{"n":3,"work":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Here, then, are two rather notable results: the one is the proved facility of obtaining statistical insight into the processes of other persons' minds, whatever a priori objection may have been made as to its possi- bility; and the other is that scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual representation. There is no doubt whatever on the latter point, how- 88 INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN FACULTY.","label":"Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development"},{"n":4,"work":"Memories of My Life","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Subsequently, I wrote an article in the Fortnightly Review^ March 1882, beginning with, •* When shall we have Anthropometric Laboratories, where a. man may from time to time get himself and his children weighed, measured, and righdy photographed, and have each of their bodily ANTHROPOMETRIC LABORATORIES 245 faculties tested, by the best methods known to modem science?","label":"Memories of My Life"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"hereditary-ability","label":"Hereditary ability: is genius born rather than made?"},{"slug":"the-statistical-study-of-heredity","label":"The statistical study of heredity: can regression and correlation capture the laws of inheritance?"}]}