New Light on Intelligence - Paper Presented at the Fifty-Sixth Annual Meeting

Discussions of the meaning of intelligence frequently begin with attempts to separate heredity from environment, or nature from nurture. Such studies can be carried out only in a population in which control can be exercised over the two sets of factors. The control of hereditary factors increases as we go from unrelated children to siblings to twins. When we think of the individual child, we must recognize at once that he is a product of nature and nurture. It is not feasible to assume either that the human organism can develop independently of its genetic basis or that any set of factors can be completely gene-controlled. This point I have developed elsewhere (Stoddard, 1939)