Dear Sir
I have just received the June issue of the Newsletter and note your message to readers.
I think that it would be interesting, certainly to myself and I imagine to others, if we could have an occasional article on the history of the Institute (Eugenics Society).
Also some ‘‘vignettes’’ of the founders would be of interest. I am sure they are, or were, interesting characters. I remember meeting Dr Blacker many years ago.
Incidentally, can you tell me how many members of the Institute are living in Australia?
Dr Elizabeth Stewart
Victoria, Australia
The Editor replies: Articles on the history of the Institute and the personalities who have shaped it would be very welcome. Those with material to offer are invited to submit it. A short note on the geographical distribution of members is planned for a future issue.
Dear Sir
By definition, the mean of any feature is the optimum for that species in that environment. What then is the biological disadvantage of high IQ?
It has been said that within our culture two IQ peaks are separating out, one high and one low, with the median contracting fast; but our culture may not long be successful.
One could suggest that high IQ is associated with high sensitivity and one becomes too raw to accept the current brutalities, but it does not ring true. Indeed, fertility is at its peak at an IQ of 130.
In schizophrenia, one of the characteristics is ‘‘knight-moving-thinking’’. This I have often thought is a characteristic of advanced thinking, lateral thinking if you like. Now, in spite of what I said in the previous paragraph, people with this disease are to some extent sub-fertile. Perhaps this could be a factor but it is not really enough.
Civilisation, ie cities, began between 7 and 10 thousand years ago and Darlington suggested that, to maintain such complexity, high IQ must have appeared just before that.
Eysenck believes that the essential mechanism for advanced intelligence is increased efficiency across the synapse. With the recent knowledge that Huntington’s disease is worse with trinucleotide repeats at one genetic point, could not higher IQ depend upon similar repeats? Equally, the more repeats the greater the biological instability? No proof, just a thought.
Patrick F James
Swallowcliffe, Nr Salisbury