"Cary Kittrell" <cary at afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
news:ago04g$3dn$1 at oasis.ccit.arizona.edu...
> In article <hopems-1207022009450001 at cs6625171-151.austin.rr.com>
hopems at mail.utexas.edu (Hope Munro Smith) writes:
> <
> <In article <3d2f507c.20059553 at news.freeserve.net>,
> <angilion at ypical.fsnet.co.uk (Angilion) wrote:
> <
> <> [several groups cut to avoid excessive crossposting]
> <>
> <> On Fri, 12 Jul 2002 15:19:57 -0500, "Shadow Dancer"
> <> <insomniac at winterslight.org> wrote:
> <>
> <> [..]
> <>
> <> >http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Thompson/psychsex.htm> <> >
> <> >To Quote:
> <> >
> <> >"The most important single contribution to our knowledge of the facts
of the
> <> >case is to be found in Dr. Franklin P. Mall's paper 'On Several
Anatomical
> <> >Characters of the Human Brain Said to Vary According to Race and Sex,
with
> <> >Especial Reference to the Weight of the Frontal Lobe' (Am. J. of
Anat., IX.,
> <> >p. 1, 1909). Dr. Mall's general conclusion is that there is as yet no
> <> >reliable evidence for the variation of anatomical characters with
either
> <> >race or sex. The belief that the brains of females differ from those
of
> <> >males has been widely accepted, and has been thought to be conclusive
> <> >evidence of the permanent inferiority of the female mind.
> <>
> <> That's obviously out of date - the general belief nowdays is that women
> <> are *more* intellectually capable than men. Try reading the posts
> <> John Knight was replying to, for example. Are you going to
> <> counter those, or are you one of the many who think that female
> <> people are innately superior to male people?
> <>
> <> You are going back to 1910 for that paper. Do you think that's
> <> actually relevant to today, especially in her conclusions about
> <> the prevailing belief concerning which sex is mentally superior?
> <
> <Really, use of such dated material is quite puzzling.
> <
> <>
> <> As an aside, I have seen it hypothesised that brain mass correlates
with
> <> height. That would neatly explain the average difference in brain
> <> mass between men and women (as an artefact of the average
> <> difference in height) and the hypothesis sounds plausible. However,
> <> I haven't seen any evidence for it. Do you have any?
> <>
> <
> <I'd be interested in hearing it as well. It would make
> <sense that a larger body would need a larger brain to work
> <its various systems, which again would prove that brain size
> <says nothing about intelligence.
>>>> That's quite standard in biology: neurological comparisons
> are always made on a brain/body mass basis, never on absolute
> brain size. (what's the smartest blue whale you've ever met?)
>>> -- cary
Which may be why so many Americans are so misled about the relationship
between intelligence and brain size.
It's absurd to infer that an 18% increase in body mass requires an 18%
increase in brain cells. It takes *precisely* the same set of instructions
and *precisely* the same compute power and *precisely* the same amount of
memory or storage, to control a 12 year old girl's body as it does to
control Akebono's body. Making the body bigger doesn't drain any resources
at all away from the brain.
We're talking about averages here, and IF [note big "if"] it's true that
brain size and height are correlated, then it's a *given* that height and
intelligence are correlated.
John Knight
