Save yourself the long grind and simply cut to the concluding 20 minute video chase.
Elizabeth Spelke clocks Steven Pinker about 2/3rds of the way through their concluding remarks. When she invokes the meritocratic nature of athletics and how black athletes have taken over every field endeavored, because of objective performance standards, imoho it's game over for the boys club of science. Pinker huffs back that women are well represented in the less hard social sciences and veterinary medicine, but still glaringly absent from physics. (word to your mother, physics, like EVERY other branch of hard science, is just as fully circumscribed by social networks as business and commerce. These relational frameworks substantially control access and exposure within the field. Getting ahead depends to a very great extent on who knows you and who likes you)
A lot of other good materials documenting the debate in detail. Ever since Lawrence Summers inserted foot in mouth, this has been gradually brewing. While I find the debate interesting on its own terms, I think you could just as easily say, The Science of Race and Science and much of what Spelke asserts would equally well be true.
Posted by at May 10, 2005 11:23 PM | TrackBack