My book for this quarter (at least so far) is The Bell Curve by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray. In the first hundred pages .It argues that intelligence is an inheritable trait, that today, more than ever before, intelligence correlates with material success and that material and intellectual resources are increasingly concentrated in the same small segment of the population. The prologue describes why the abolition of traditional aristocracies has in fact lead to a crystalization of wealth and intelligence rather than an increase in social mobility. It describes how in the past, an intelligent, capable person would be successful enough to hold hereditary, aristocratic rank. They would then marry and have children. Their title and wealth would pass to their firstborn, who would be likely to intellectually regress to the mean, a process that could continue for generations, progressively diluting the talents of the original, socially mobile aristocrat. The wealth would still remain in one family, but that family's intelligence would wither. Hernstein and Murray provide two reasons why the previous scenario is no longer valid. Firstly,, wealthy intelligent people are more likely to marry other intelligent people today than they were in the past (largely because wealth and intelligence are now more correlated than ever so marrying for money is more likely to produce an intelligent spouse). Secondly, the demise of primogeniture now allows parents to chose which offspring to pass on economic resources to. Within the first 30 pages the authors make several controversial statements. The idea that intelligence is largely predicated on gene structure, or even that it can ever be quantified is somewhat dubious. I think (or I would like to think) that environmental factors can effect intelligence more than genes. Even if you take the authors assumptions at face value they only claim that 40-80 percent of intelligence is heritable. Whatever the case, as long as it is not 100%, external factors such as public education can be used to make sure that all have sufficient intellectual capacity (or whatever you want to call it) to succeed in life. Nonetheless, I found this book's conclusions to be disconcerting. I have heard so much recently about income and wealth inequality but I always assumed that intelligence is relatively evenly distributed (and the book has not yet succeeded in disabusing me of this notion). Many of the solutions to income inequality deal with providing equal opportunity, to disadvantaged groups. If Hernstein and Murray are correct, these groups have already been sapped of the most vital resource they need: intelligence. All the smart members of a disadvantaged group become rich, leaving large swathes of the American population devoid of intellectual capacity and material resources. I do not yet believe the author's thesis but if they are even partially right, the situation in this nation is more dire than it seems.