Dedicated to Joyce
Sei il mio amor y tutta la mia vita
(You are my love and my whole life)
Mimi – G. Puccini, La Bohème, Act V
(Translated from English: A.A. Grigoriev)
Dear Russian reader! I am glad that my book was published in Russia and that our kindred Russian people will be able to become acquainted with the views expressed in it on racial differences in intelligence. I have summarized the results of several hundred studies showing that we Europeans, along with the East Asian peoples (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), have the highest intelligence. This may be considered obvious. Almost all the discoveries in science and technology have been made over the past two and a half thousand years by our peoples, the peoples of Europe and East Asia, and they have created almost all the great works visual arts, music and literature. In the second part of the book I offer an explanation for this. I believe that our ancestors had to live in harsh conditions during the last ice age, when only those with high intelligence could survive. Now, however, the future of our peoples is in danger. The number of children born to us is not enough to maintain the size of our populations. How do we solve this problem? Can we survive? Or will peoples with lower intelligence take our place? I leave the reader to judge these important questions.
Richard Lynn
University of Ulster
Evolution, race and intelligence
Simplicity is worse than theft
(Russian folk proverb)
The factor of intelligence in the life of certain peoples and races has been repeatedly highlighted in legends and proverbs throughout history. There are countless examples of this. And this is not at all about the fact that some are “better” or “worse” than others. The very specificity of mental activity in terms of style, as well as the dynamics of various mental acts, has been noted in many written monuments since ancient times. IN sacred texts world religions, we easily discover the same relationship, and the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, through the efforts of discoverers and missionaries, only confirmed the rule that in all parts of the world the attitude towards basic ethical values is deeply different. The desires and interests of people everywhere differ radically. Some peoples and races with amazing tenacity over the centuries have shown us miracles of practical ingenuity and survival, considering this the highest good, others, on the contrary, treat such a strategy of behavior with undisguised contempt, preferring to create gigantic theoretical constructions. It is this diversity of manifestations of higher mental activity that gives us a magnificent palette of the greatness of the human race.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the sages have always tried to measure and explain the presence of mental abilities both in individuals and in entire tribes. Already in the first chronicle sources we can detect attempts to bring physical and mental characteristics of people’s differences into a group system. Managing the first large empires and multicultural formations required administrators to switch from the imaginative thinking of poets to dry state statistics, since every ruler wanted to know what he had the right to expect from a new unknown people, who, by the will of the gods, had fallen under the hand of his management. Legislative acts that have reached us Ancient Egypt and Babylon testify to this natural-historical pattern. At the dawn of human development, various indirect indicators were initially used to determine the mental as well as moral preferences of the people: from the number of soldiers on display, children in families, the size of cities and the fairness of laws to grain reserves and attraction to certain crafts. As civilization developed, the system of evaluation criteria became more complex, but the same need remained unshakable, namely: in addition to emotional quality characteristics determine certain absolute parameters of mental abilities. The world's oldest system of examining young people for employment or educational establishments served precisely these purposes. Military ranks, awards, scientific degrees and public privileges have also at all times been intended to activate mental abilities, including intelligence, in citizens.
In connection with the universalization of life and the principles of organizing a hostel in modern times, a need arose to unify the criteria for assessing the mental abilities of various branches human race. Global contacts automatically required each race to understand its place in the general world order, and the measurement of intelligence was a natural step towards general civilizational harmony.
Carl Linnaeus
The outstanding classic of natural science, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), based the first scientific racial classification precisely on the trinity of manifestations of physical, mental and moral qualities, which prepared the basis for the emergence of classical evolutionary theory. For it is quite obvious that in the process progressive development Not only the physical shell of a person undergoes changes, but also its mental and moral content, which is developed as a set of adaptive reactions. But abstract man is a fiction, one of the greatest humanitarian delusions of the modern era. Every person by nature is a carrier of hereditary racial characteristics, which are inherently manifested in every type of his activity, including intellectual. Racial characteristics are a stamp that is easily recognizable on every historical act.
In this regard, the book by British professor Richard Lynn, offered to the Russian reader for the first time with the kind permission of the author, is a kind of crowning achievement of the main line of classical evolutionary theory, in which English School traditionally set the tone.
Today, when both in the media and in scientific circles it has become a kind of sign of good manners to criticize Charles Darwin and expose the alleged inconsistency of his theory, it is necessary to clearly answer biased critics that he never wrote anywhere that a person in the literal sense of this the word originated from the monkey. In addition, in his autobiography, the master repeatedly emphasized that he did not say anything new, but only systematized numerous concepts of natural science that existed before him.
Charles Darwin
Richard Lynn is Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster in Dublin. He is one of the oldest (born in 1930) and most authoritative representatives of the classical British school of psychology. Much of his work is devoted to the study of intelligence. Among the main discoveries made by R. Lynn, it should be noted that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of native East Asians is on average 5 points higher than that of Europeans, regardless of the place of residence of the subjects. The author also showed for the first time, initially in a Japanese population, that in the second half of the 20th century there was a steady increase in the results of psychometric IQ assessments. Subsequently, the universality of this phenomenon was shown, which was called the “Flynn effect” after the name of the researcher who studied it in depth. The reason is considered to be the improvement of living conditions in economically developed countries in the 20th century. Richard Lynn has shown that the intelligence of adult men is on average 4–5 points higher than that of women, which he attributes to the relatively smaller size of their brains. This fact initially caused a very violent reaction in scientific and public circles.
The factor of intelligence in the life of certain peoples and races has been repeatedly highlighted in legends and proverbs throughout history. There are countless examples of this. And the point is not necessarily that some are “better” or “worse” than others. The very specificity of mental activity in terms of style, as well as the dynamics of various psychological acts, has been noted in many written monuments since ancient times. In the sacred texts of world religions we easily find the same relationship, and the era of “great geographical discoveries” through the efforts of discoverers and missionaries only confirmed the rule that in all parts of the world the attitude towards basic ethical values is deeply different. The desires and interests of people everywhere are radically different. Some peoples and races with amazing tenacity over the centuries have shown us miracles of practical ingenuity and survival, considering this the highest good, others, on the contrary, treat such a strategy of behavior with undisguised contempt, preferring to create gigantic idealistic concepts. It is this diversity of manifestations of higher nervous activity that gives us a magnificent palette of the greatness of the human race.
Knowledge of the material presented in the book is necessary, in our opinion, for the widest sections of the reading audience in Russia: from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers to politicians, intelligence officers and law enforcement agencies. This information is also useful for criminologists, doctors and teachers. In the conditions of multi-ethnic and multi-racial Russia, it is an objective analysis of the intelligence of citizens that will help nip any conflicts in the bud and make the most rational use of the country’s gene pool for the purpose of its prosperity. Being naively intoxicated by the illusions of equality, we have already lost our great country and therefore no longer have the historical right to repeat this catastrophe, which, as we remember, was accompanied by wars almost throughout the entire perimeter of the former USSR, the death of thousands of innocent citizens, and forced migrations of millions of compatriots.
Wars are generated by forgetting the need for differences, when some try to impose their values on others. On the contrary, a civilized, balanced account of the diversity of the planet’s gene pool will help us maintain peace in the context of globalization.
Richard Lynn's address to Russian readers.
Dear Russian reader! I am glad that my book was published in Russia and that our kindred Russian people will be able to become acquainted with the views expressed in it on racial differences in intelligence. I have summarized the results of several hundred studies showing that we Europeans, along with the East Asian peoples (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), have the highest intelligence. This may be considered obvious. Almost all the discoveries in science and technology have been made over the past two and a half thousand years by our peoples, the peoples of Europe and East Asia, and they have also created almost all the great works of fine art, music and literature. In the second part of the book I offer an explanation for this. I explain this by the fact that our ancestors had to live in harsh conditions during the last ice age, when only those with high intelligence could survive. Now, however, the future of our peoples is in danger. The number of children born to us is not enough to maintain the size of our populations. How do we solve this problem? Can we survive? Or will our place be taken by peoples with lower intelligence? I leave the reader to judge these important questions.
Richard Lynn's message to Russian readers
Dedicated to Joyce
Sei il mio amor y tutta la mia vita
(You are my love and my whole life)
Mimi – G. Puccini, La Bohème, Act V
(Translated from English: A.A. Grigoriev)
Dear Russian reader! I am glad that my book was published in Russia and that our kindred Russian people will be able to become acquainted with the views expressed in it on racial differences in intelligence. I have summarized the results of several hundred studies showing that we Europeans, along with the East Asian peoples (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans), have the highest intelligence. This may be considered obvious. Almost all the discoveries in science and technology have been made over the past two and a half thousand years by our peoples, the peoples of Europe and East Asia, and they have also created almost all the great works of fine art, music and literature. In the second part of the book I offer an explanation for this. I believe that our ancestors had to live in harsh conditions during the last ice age, when only those with high intelligence could survive. Now, however, the future of our peoples is in danger. The number of children born to us is not enough to maintain the size of our populations. How do we solve this problem? Can we survive? Or will peoples with lower intelligence take our place? I leave the reader to judge these important questions.
Richard Lynn
University of Ulster
Evolution, race and intelligence
Simplicity is worse than theft
(Russian folk proverb)
The factor of intelligence in the life of certain peoples and races has been repeatedly highlighted in legends and proverbs throughout history. There are countless examples of this. And this is not at all about the fact that some are “better” or “worse” than others. The very specificity of mental activity in terms of style, as well as the dynamics of various mental acts, has been noted in many written monuments since ancient times. In the sacred texts of world religions, we easily find the same relationship, and the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries, through the efforts of discoverers and missionaries, only confirmed the rule that in all parts of the world the attitude towards basic ethical values is deeply different. The desires and interests of people everywhere differ radically. Some peoples and races with amazing tenacity over the centuries have shown us miracles of practical ingenuity and survival, considering this the highest good, others, on the contrary, treat such a strategy of behavior with undisguised contempt, preferring to create gigantic theoretical constructions. It is this diversity of manifestations of higher mental activity that gives us a magnificent palette of the greatness of the human race.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the sages have always tried to measure and explain the presence of mental abilities both in individuals and in entire tribes. Already in the first chronicle sources we can detect attempts to bring physical and mental characteristics of people’s differences into a group system. Managing the first large empires and multicultural formations required administrators to switch from the imaginative thinking of poets to dry state statistics, since every ruler wanted to know what he had the right to expect from a new unknown people, who, by the will of the gods, had fallen under the hand of his management. The legislative acts of Ancient Egypt and Babylon that have reached us testify to this natural historical pattern. At the dawn of human development, various indirect indicators were initially used to determine the mental as well as moral preferences of the people: from the number of soldiers on display, children in families, the size of cities and the fairness of laws to grain reserves and attraction to certain crafts. As civilization developed, the system of evaluation criteria became more complex, but the same need remained unshakable, namely: in addition to emotional qualitative characteristics, to determine certain absolute parameters of mental abilities. The world's oldest system of examining young people for employment or educational institutions served precisely these purposes. Military ranks, awards, scientific degrees and public privileges have also at all times been intended to activate mental abilities, including intelligence, in citizens.
In connection with the universalization of existence and the principles of organizing community life in modern times, a need arose to unify the criteria for assessing the mental abilities of various branches of the human race. Global contacts automatically required each race to understand its place in the general world order, and the measurement of intelligence was a natural step towards general civilizational harmony.
Carl Linnaeus
The outstanding classic of natural science, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), based the first scientific racial classification precisely on the trinity of manifestations of physical, mental and moral qualities, which prepared the basis for the emergence of classical evolutionary theory. For it is quite obvious that in the process of progressive development, not only the physical shell of a person undergoes changes, but also its mental and moral content, which is developed as a set of adaptive reactions. But abstract man is a fiction, one of the greatest humanitarian delusions of the modern era. Every person by nature is a carrier of hereditary racial characteristics, which are inherently manifested in every type of his activity, including intellectual. Racial characteristics are a stamp that is easily recognizable on every historical act.
In this regard, the book by British professor Richard Lynn, offered to the Russian reader for the first time with the kind permission of the author, is a kind of crowning achievement of the main line of classical evolutionary theory, in which the English school has traditionally set the tone.
Today, when both in the media and in scientific circles it has become a kind of sign of good manners to criticize Charles Darwin and expose the alleged inconsistency of his theory, it is necessary to clearly answer biased critics that he never wrote anywhere that a person in the literal sense of this the word originated from the monkey. In addition, in his autobiography, the master repeatedly emphasized that he did not say anything new, but only systematized numerous concepts of natural science that existed before him.
Charles Darwin
Richard Lynn is Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster in Dublin. He is one of the oldest (born in 1930) and most authoritative representatives of the classical British school of psychology. Much of his work is devoted to the study of intelligence. Among the main discoveries made by R. Lynn, it should be noted that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of native East Asians is on average 5 points higher than that of Europeans, regardless of the place of residence of the subjects. The author also showed for the first time, initially in a Japanese population, that in the second half of the 20th century there was a steady increase in the results of psychometric IQ assessments. Subsequently, the universality of this phenomenon was shown, which was called the “Flynn effect” after the name of the researcher who studied it in depth. The reason is considered to be the improvement of living conditions in economically developed countries in the 20th century. Richard Lynn has shown that the intelligence of adult men is on average 4–5 points higher than that of women, which he attributes to the relatively smaller size of their brains. This fact initially caused a very violent reaction in scientific and public circles.
Among R. Lynn's major works, it is necessary to mention the monographs “Dysgenics” (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996) and “Eugenics” (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), in which he provides data on the emerging deterioration of physical and mental health and intellectual abilities modern human population and estimates possible methods combat this threat. In the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” (co-authored with the Finnish scientist Tatu Vanhanen – IQ and the Wealth of Nations; Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), R. Lynn examines the problem of the dependence of the welfare and economic growth of nations on the “national » IQ. Based on the results of data analysis for 185 countries, the author convincingly shows the contribution of each nation’s IQ to its indicators of economic well-being.
Biography
Son of botanist and geneticist Sidney Cross Harland ( Sydney Cross Harland, 1891-1982), known for his work on cotton genetics. Lynn's parents divorced when he was still a child, and he did not meet his father again until 1949, when he returned to Britain from Peru and was appointed professor of genetics at the University of Manchester.
Received a psychological education and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Cambridge. He was Dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Ulster.
He is known for his research in the field of human intelligence, a number of provisions of which have caused widespread debate. Author of the monographs “IQ and Global Inequality” (Eng. and the Wealth of Nations) () and “IQ and Global Inequality” (Eng. IQ and Global Inequality) (), co-authored with Tatu Vanhanen.
Monographs
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Literature
Helmuth Nyborg(Ed.) Race and sex differences in intelligence and personality: A tribute to Richard Lynn at 80. Ulster Institute for Social Research. London U.K. pp. xiv + 354. ISBN 9780957391338.
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Excerpt characterizing Lynn, Richard
“And he awarded!.. he awarded!” the old man said in a quiet voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrei, with embarrassment, but then suddenly he jumped up and shouted: “Get out, get out!” May your spirit not be here!..Prince Andrey wanted to leave immediately, but Princess Marya begged him to stay another day. On this day, Prince Andrei did not see his father, who did not go out and did not allow anyone to see him except M lle Bourienne and Tikhon, and asked several times whether his son had left. The next day, before leaving, Prince Andrei went to see his son's half. A healthy, curly-haired boy sat on his lap. Prince Andrei began to tell him the tale of Bluebeard, but, without finishing it, he became lost in thought. He was not thinking about this pretty boy son while he was holding him on his lap, but was thinking about himself. He searched in horror and found in himself neither remorse for having irritated his father, nor regret that he (in a quarrel for the first time in his life) was leaving him. The most important thing for him was that he was looking for and did not find that former tenderness for his son, which he hoped to arouse in himself by caressing the boy and sitting him on his lap.
“Well, tell me,” said the son. Prince Andrei, without answering him, took him down from the pillars and left the room.
As soon as Prince Andrei left his daily activities, especially as soon as he entered into the previous conditions of life in which he had been even when he was happy, the melancholy of life gripped him with the same force, and he hurried to quickly get away from these memories and find something to do quickly.
– Are you going decisively, Andre? - his sister told him.
“Thank God I can go,” said Prince Andrey, “I’m very sorry that you can’t.”
- Why are you saying this! - said Princess Marya. - Why are you saying this now, when you are going to this terrible war and he is so old! M lle Bourienne said that he asked about you... - As soon as she began to talk about this, her lips trembled and tears began to fall. Prince Andrei turned away from her and began to walk around the room.
- Oh my god! My God! - he said. – And just think about what and who – what insignificance can be the cause of people’s misfortune! - he said with anger, which frightened Princess Marya.
She realized that, speaking about the people whom he called nonentities, he meant not only m lle Bourienne, who made him misfortune, but also the person who ruined his happiness.
“Andre, I ask one thing, I beg you,” she said, touching his elbow and looking at him with shining eyes through tears. – I understand you (Princess Marya lowered her eyes). Don't think that it was people who caused the grief. People are his instrument. “She looked a little higher than Prince Andrei’s head with that confident, familiar look with which they look at a familiar place in a portrait. - The grief was sent to them, not people. People are his tools, they are not to blame. If it seems to you that someone is to blame for you, forget it and forgive. We have no right to punish. And you will understand the happiness of forgiving.
– If I were a woman, I would do this, Marie. This is the virtue of a woman. But a man should not and cannot forget and forgive,” he said, and, although he had not thought about Kuragin until that moment, all the unresolved anger suddenly rose in his heart. “If Princess Marya is already trying to persuade me to forgive me, then it means I should have been punished a long time ago,” he thought. And, no longer answering Princess Marya, he now began to think about that joyful, angry moment when he would meet Kuragin, who (he knew) was in the army.
Princess Marya begged her brother to wait another day, saying that she knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrei left without making peace with him; but Prince Andrei replied that he would probably soon come back from the army again, that he would certainly write to his father, and that now the longer he stayed, the more this discord would be fueled.
– Adieu, Andre! Rappelez vous que les malheurs viennent de Dieu, et que les hommes ne sont jamais coupables, [Farewell, Andrey! Remember that misfortunes come from God and that people are never to blame.] - were the last words he heard from his sister when he said goodbye to her.
“This is how it should be! - thought Prince Andrei, driving out of the alley of the Lysogorsk house. “She, a pitiful innocent creature, is left to be devoured by a crazy old man.” The old man feels that he is to blame, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and enjoying a life in which he will be the same as everyone else, deceived or deceiving. I'm going to the army, why? - I don’t know myself, and I want to meet that person whom I despise, in order to give him a chance to kill me and laugh at me! And before there were all the same living conditions, but before they were all connected with each other, but now everything has fallen apart. Some senseless phenomena, without any connection, one after another presented themselves to Prince Andrei.
Prince Andrei arrived at the army headquarters at the end of June. The troops of the first army, the one with which the sovereign was located, were located in a fortified camp near Drissa; the troops of the second army retreated, trying to connect with the first army, from which - as they said - they were cut off by large forces of the French. Everyone was dissatisfied with the general course of military affairs in the Russian army; but no one thought about the danger of an invasion of the Russian provinces, no one imagined that the war could be transferred further than the western Polish provinces.
Racial differences in intelligence
Richard Lynn Racial differences in intelligence. Evolutionary analysis. / Per. from English Rumyantsev D.O. - M.: Profit Style, 2010. - 304 p.
ISBN 5-98857-157-3
ISBN 1-593680-21-Х (Washington Summit Publishers, 2006)
Table of contents
Chapter 1. The meaning and measurement of intelligence
Chapter 2 The meaning and formation of races
Chapter 3 Europeans
Chapter 4 Africans
Chapter 5 Bushmen and Pygmies
Chapter 6 Aborigines of South Asia and North Africa
Chapter 7 Aborigines of Southeast Asia
Chapter 8 Australian Aborigines
Chapter 9 Aborigines of the Islands Pacific Ocean
Chapter 10 East Asians
Chapter 11 Arctic peoples
Chapter 12 American Indians
Chapter 13 Reliability and validity of racial differences in intelligence
Chapter 14 Environmental and Genetic Determinants of Racial Differences in Intelligence
Chapter 15 Evolution of Intelligence
Chapter 16 Climate, Race, Brain Size, and Intelligence
Chapter 17 The Evolution of Racial Differences in Intelligence
Appendix: Intelligence Tests
Bibliography
Name index
Subject index
^
Evolution, race and intelligence
Simplicity is worse than theft
(Russian folk proverb)
The factor of intelligence in the life of certain peoples and races has been repeatedly highlighted in legends and proverbs throughout history. There are countless examples of this. And the point is not necessarily that some are “better” or “worse” than others. The very specificity of mental activity in terms of style, as well as the dynamics of various psychological acts, has been noted in many written monuments since ancient times. In the sacred texts of world religions we easily find the same relationship, and the era of “great geographical discoveries” through the efforts of discoverers and missionaries only confirmed the rule that in all parts of the world the attitude towards basic ethical values is deeply different. The desires and interests of people everywhere are radically different. Some peoples and races with amazing tenacity over the centuries have shown us miracles of practical ingenuity and survival, considering this the highest good, others, on the contrary, treat such a strategy of behavior with undisguised contempt, preferring to create gigantic idealistic concepts. It is this diversity of manifestations of higher nervous activity that gives us a magnificent palette of the greatness of the human race.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the sages have always tried to measure and explain the mental abilities of both individuals and entire tribes. Already in the first chronicle sources we can detect attempts to bring physical and mental characteristics of people’s differences into a group system. Managing the first large empires and multicultural formations required administrators to switch from the imaginative thinking of poets to dry state statistics, since every ruler wanted to know what he had the right to expect from a new unknown people, who, by the will of the Gods, had fallen under the hand of his management. The legislative acts of Ancient Egypt and Babylon that have reached us do not give us any opportunity to make a mistake in understanding this natural historical pattern. At the dawn of human development, various indirect indicators were initially used to determine the mental as well as moral preferences of the people: from quantities exhibited warriors, children in families, the size of cities and the fairness of laws, to grain reserves and attraction to certain crafts. As civilization developed, the system of evaluation criteria became more complex, but the same need remained unshakable, namely: in addition to emotional qualitative characteristics, to determine certain absolute parameters of mental abilities. The world's oldest system of examining young people for employment or educational institutions served precisely these purposes. Military ranks, awards, scientific degrees and public privileges have also at all times been intended to activate vital abilities in citizens, including intellect.
Thus, in connection with the universalization of existence and the principles of organizing community life in modern times, the need arose to unify the criteria for assessing the mental abilities of various branches of the human race. Global contacts automatically required each race to understand its place in the general world order, and the measurement of intelligence was a natural step towards general civilizational harmony.
The outstanding classic of natural science, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), built the first scientific racial classification precisely on the trinity of manifestations of physical, mental and moral qualities, which prepared the basis for the emergence of classical evolutionary theory. For it is quite obvious that in the process of progressive development, not only the physical shell of a person undergoes changes, but also its mental and moral content, which is developed as a set of adaptive reactions. But abstract man is a fiction, one of the greatest humanitarian delusions of the modern era. Every person by nature is a carrier of hereditary racial characteristics, which are inherently manifested in every type of his activity, including intellectual. Racial characteristics are a stamp that is easily recognizable on every historical act.
In this regard, the book by British professor Richard Lynn, offered to the Russian reader for the first time with the kind permission of the author, is a kind of crowning achievement of the main line of classical evolutionary theory, in which the English school has traditionally set the tone.
Today, both in the media and in scientific circles, it has become a kind of sign of good manners to criticize Charles Darwin and expose the alleged inconsistency of his theory. It is necessary to clearly answer biased critics that he never wrote anywhere that man in the literal sense of the word descended from a monkey. In addition, in his autobiography, the master repeatedly emphasized that he did not say anything new, but only systematized numerous concepts of natural science that existed before him.
Richard Lynn is Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster in Dublin. He is one of the oldest (born in 1930) and most authoritative representatives of the classical British school of psychology. Much of his work is devoted to the study of intelligence. Among the main discoveries made by R. Lynn, it should be noted that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the indigenous people of East Asia is on average 5 points higher than that of Europeans, regardless of the place of residence of the subjects. The author was also the first to show, initially in a Japanese population, that in the second half of the 20th century there was a steady increase in IQ scores through psychological tests. Subsequently, the universality of this phenomenon was shown, which was called the “Flynn effect” after the name of the researcher who studied this phenomenon in depth. The reason is considered to be the improvement of living conditions in economically developed countries in the 20th century. Richard Lynn first showed (in 1994) that the intelligence of adult men is on average 4-5 points higher than that of women, which he attributes to the relatively smaller brain size of women. This fact initially caused a very violent reaction in scientific and public circles.
Among the major works of R. Lynn it is necessary to name the monographs “Dysgenics” (“Dysgenics”; Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996) and “Eugenics” (“Eugenics”; Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), in which he provides data on the emerging the deterioration of physical and mental health and intellectual abilities of the modern human population and evaluates possible methods of combating this threat. In the book “IQ and the Wealth of Nations” (co-authored with the Finnish scientist Tatu Vanhanen – “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”; Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), R. Lynn examines the problem of the relationship between differences in indicators of welfare and economic the growth of nations on intelligence indicators. Based on the results of data analysis for 185 modern nations, the author convincingly shows the contribution of the IQ of each nation to the indicators of its economic well-being.
Since 1991, the main direction of R. Lynn's work has been the comparative study of the intelligence of peoples of different races. This book “Racial Differences in Intelligence. Evolutionary Analysis, published in 2006 (Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis; Augusta, Georgia: Washington Summit Books) is the result of approximately 25 years of work by the author. The preface to the book was written by a remarkable psychologist of the British school working in Canada, John Philippe Rushton, who is considered the largest specialist in the field of studying racial characteristics of psychology. He notes that R. Lynn entered a “minefield” in his research, since both initially and now supporters of hypertrophied “political correctness” do not agree to accept the results of his research. This is not surprising, since, according to another outstanding British thinker, Thomas Hobbes, “if geometric axioms affected the interests of people, they would be refuted.” The name of R. Lynn could easily be placed under the words spoken by another outstanding scientist of our time, Nobel laureate, who deciphered the structure of DNA, James Watson: “Honesty is good for this world, it makes the world work more efficiently.”
Based on his own research and analysis of more than 500 works by other authors, carried out from the beginning of the entry of psychological tests into the arsenal of psychology to the present day, R. Lynn demonstrates the peculiarities of intelligence of representatives of all human races(more than a hundred nations and nationalities) and assesses the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to these differences. The author proposes a model for the evolution of observed racial differences in intelligence. Despite the fact that R. Lynn's work represents the most complete set of data on the problem to date, the book is very compact. The author expresses his thoughts sufficiently accessible language, understanding them in most cases does not require in-depth prior study of psychology or evolutionary biology. Good subject and author indexes allow the reader to quickly find the information they need.
His work is the most comprehensive and recent analysis (the book was published in 2006) of data from studies of racial characteristics of intelligence. Intelligence measures are compared with other psychological and biometric characteristics, and a number of explanations for racial differences in intelligence are proposed, including the influence of genetic factors and environmental factors. The author proposes his own theory of the evolution of human intelligence.
No books on racial differences in intelligence have been published in Russia, except for some hard-to-find journal publications in the 1920s. XX century.
The studies analyzed by R. Lynn use a variety of IQ tests to measure intelligence. Some of these tests are currently widely used in our country to solve practical problems (for example, Raven's progressive matrices), while others are completely unknown. Getting acquainted with R. Lynn's book will help expand the tools of domestic psychologists. In addition, the practice of working with IQ tests in our country today is far from perfect. After a long break caused by the defeat of testology in the 1930s, the culture of this practice was lost. Currently, a huge number of, to put it mildly, low-quality, psychodiagnostic tests are used and psychodiagnostics is not used to solve large-scale problems, for example in the field of education.
In order to put everything in its place and bring some sense to the increasingly active critics of evolutionism, we believe it is necessary to shed some light on the history of the issue.
It was the British who were the pioneers who, in the era of “great geographical discoveries,” were for the first time able to draw purely pragmatic conclusions and systematize a body of knowledge about “exotic” countries. Founded in 1660 in England, the Royal Society served the purposes of promoting science and its practical application, taking into account the racial differences of the indigenous populations of new continents.
Let us list the names of scientific geniuses in this field.
John Bulwer (1606-1656) laid the foundations of raciology, creating a systematic description of human biotypes with their characteristic physical and mental characteristics. Thomas Willis (1621-1675) was the first to describe anatomy and physiology nervous system humans and animals. John Ray (1627-1705) formulated the principles of the scientific classification of races. Edward Tyson (1650-1708) gave a detailed comparative description of the morphological structure of the orangutan, black and European in all the details of the skeleton, muscle tissue and skin. John Hunter (1728-1793) pioneered the creation of craniology and, at the same time, developed a philosophical understanding of the racial problem. Charles White (1728-1813) formulated the principles of racial surgery. Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) laid the foundation comparative anatomy and medical ethics in its modern understanding. The name of such a scientist as James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) is associated with the formation of a new independent science - ethnology.
James Hunt (1833-1869) founded the first English Anthropological Society, and Robert Knox (1791-1862) created the doctrine of “transcendental anatomy”, according to which all living beings are structured in a similar way due to the universal unity of biological functions. It was this concept that replaced the theological idea of God's plan and laid the anatomical basis for evolutionary theory.
Developing the ideas of Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) gave a modern form to the classification of races, and Alfred Russel Walles (1823-1913) formulated the global principles of biogeography. Finally, John Beddoe (1826-1911) brought to anthropology statistical methods and thus finally turned it into an exact science. Edward Burnett Taylor (1832-1917) in turn substantiated the doctrine of the “scale of civilization” and proposed using it to measure different cultures. Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) immortalized his name with the creation of eugenics - the science of improving the human race. Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940) made the principles of English physical anthropology universal, because it was at this time that the creation of a single unified method of racial measurements began around the globe. Karl Pearson (1857-1936) created biometrics and laid the foundations of modern statistics, thanks to which many branches of natural science, including the gigantic corpus of human sciences, received a powerful mathematical apparatus for planning research and processing their results. Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955) created the theory of the hereditary hormonal origin of racial differences and the origin of modern races from different ancestors in different geographical areas and at different times. Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (1871-1937) based on the latest methods studied the neurological and psychophysiological characteristics of races in the context of the development of their cultures. William Halse Rivers Rivers (1864-1922) created scales of color and pain sensitivity for representatives of different races, thereby finally providing a biological basis for the reasons for the diversity of cultures. John Randal Baker (1900-1984) formulated a large-scale universal concept of biological criteria for assessing the independence of cultures.
This list of great English natural scientists indicates only some of the tips of that gigantic worldview iceberg, which is based on the deep archetypal idea that everything in this world has specific differences that need to be able to be measured. Thus, the main fundamental book of Professor Richard Lynn today crowns the centuries-old glorious tradition of the development of English natural science in this area, which is its enduring value.
Knowledge of the material presented in the book is necessary, in our opinion, for the widest sections of the reading audience in Russia: from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers to politicians, intelligence officers and law enforcement agencies. This information is also useful for criminologists, doctors and teachers. In the conditions of multinational and multiracial Russia, it is an objective analysis of the intelligence of citizens that will help nip any conflicts in the bud and make the most rational use of the country’s gene pool for the purpose of its prosperity. Being naively intoxicated by the illusions of equality, we have already lost our great country and therefore no longer have the historical right to repeat this catastrophe, which, as we remember, was accompanied by wars almost throughout the entire perimeter of the former USSR, the death of thousands of innocent citizens, and forced migrations of millions of compatriots.
Wars are generated by forgetting the need for differences, when some try to impose their values on others. On the contrary, a civilized, balanced account of the diversity of the planet’s gene pool will help us maintain peace in the context of globalization.
In conclusion, I would like to note another important fact that prompted us to translate and publish this book in Russian. In the media, on television and in newspapers in our country, the idea is often, even if implicitly, conveyed about the centuries-old hostility of the British towards Russia. Mr. Richard Lynn is not only a genuine world-class scientist, but also a classic gentleman, as well as a sincere and uncompromising lover of Russian culture.
All of the above factors are quite sufficient, in our opinion, for this book to take its place. worthy place on the shelves of bookstores, libraries and desks all thinking citizens of the Russian Federation.
Member of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation V. B. Avdeev
Doctor of Philology A. A. Grigoriev
Candidate of Biological Sciences D. O. Rumyantsev
Russian Intellectual and Cognitive Resource
"VELESOVA SLOBODA"
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