These thoughts are inspired by the recent article by Michael Hanlon, the Daily Mail science editor, who questions, correctly, the recent findings of Canadian scientists linking conservatism with a lower IQ than that boasted by those of the leftwing persuasion.
Equally correctly he suggests that the political terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ are in need of revision. He is absolutely right. For example, Margaret Thatcher is usually described by readers (and writers) of some other newspapers as ‘extreme right’. When one examines her political beliefs (if not always things she actually did), one finds that they fall, without remainder, within the domain of traditional liberalism: free markets, personal liberty, small state and so forth. In British terms she is an out and out Whig, though she misleadingly led the Conservative party, which too is these days a misnomer.
Now, the same pejorative term, ‘extreme rightwing’, is applied by the same people to the likes of Hitler. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C. Adapting this proven logic to the task at hand, we have to conclude that Hitler was a Whig too. However, even a cursory examination of his views shows that they are socialist: state control, if not outright ownership, of the economy; socialised medicine and education; cradle to grave welfare; institutionalised atheism — plus the kind of genocidal practices that in modern times are associated with socialists of either the national or international hue. And socialism is clearly leftwing.
Thus anyone who calls both Lady Thatcher and Hitler ‘extreme rightwing’ isn’t just wrong but ignorant. And any ignorant person who doesn’t mind airing his ignorance in public is stupid enough not to be aware of it. Ergo, most Guardian readers are stupid — regardless of how high or low their IQ is.
And that brings me to my areas of disagreement with Michael Hanlon. Most immediately, he seems to accept that IQ measures intelligence. It doesn’t. It measures intellectual potential, which relates to intelligence roughly the same way as musicality relates to musicianship. The former one is born with, the latter needs careful and dedicated nurtuting over a lifetime.
Real, what’s sometimes called ‘high’, intelligence is made up of multifarious elements, only one of which is measured by IQ tests. Such tests are indeed the most reliable single predictor of practical succes in life. However, neither Guardian readers nor indeed Mr Hanlon would probably equate practical success with intelligence.
IQ tests measure the ability to solve practical problems quickly, and this is essential for a businessman or advertising copywriter. However, it is more or less irrelevant to answering the seminal questions of existence, where methodical depth is much more essential than facile cleverness. Someone like Miss Vorderman no doubt has a high IQ: she solves little riddles instantly. By contrast, Thomas Aquinas was notoriously slow and ponderous in his thinking. Yet I doubt that many of those qualified to pass judgment on such matters would claim that Miss Vorderman is more intelligent.
While most successful PR consultants and stockbrokers have IQs higher than average, many great scientists, especially in theoretical fields, don’t. For example, William Stockley, who won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, had a modest IQ of 110. Carol Vorderman would run rings around him in any TV quiz show, but even those who design IQ tests probably wouldn’t put her up for a Nobel Prize.
Another, more important, area where Hanlon’s reasoning is suspect is his obvious belief that espousing ‘enlightened’ (as in the Age of Enlightenment) liberalism is a sign of intelligence. To me it is a sign of voguish intellectual laziness, something against which a high IQ can’t immunise.
One sign of true intelligence is an ability to analyse available evidence dispassionately. Such an analysis would show the the Enlightenment was an unmitigated disaster socially, culturally and politically. Every problem in these areas that we are experiencing now is directly traceable back to this calamitous development.
Constraints of space won’t allow as broad and deep an analysis of the Enlightenment as that which I attempted in a couple of books on the subject. So I’ll single out just one aspect: Darwinism, which most leftwingers treat with the same reverence that believers reserve for the Trinitarian God.
Yet, Genesis aside, any systematic analysis of available data, especially in biochemistry, but also in paleontology, cosmology, physics and every other relevant science, would blow Darwin’s halfbaked theory out of the water. That is not to suggest that no microevolution, a species adapting to its environment, has ever taken place. It’s just that modern science proves both empirically and theoretically that this falls far short of being the sole and universal explanation of any biological life, let alone man.
This is clearly understood by any serious scientist, regardless of his religious beliefs. For example, the late Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the DNA double helix, was an atheist. Yet he instantly saw that his discovery invalidated Darwinism there and then. Unable to bring himself to God, Crick had to ascribe the creation of life to aliens from another planet, which in purely scientific terms amounts to the same thing: he knew that biological life could not have self-generated as a result of some accidental event not inspired by an outside influence. Crick also realised that certain mechanisms within the double helix simply could not have evolved: as they would have been unable to function in any other than their present form, they had to be created once and for all (this is called ‘irreducible complexity’ in science).
Traditionally, if a theory (and even the most strident champions of Darwin’s evolution never claim that it’s anything more than that) doesn’t become scientific fact within a generation, two at most, it’s relegated to the status of museum exhibit. That Darwinsim is still regarded as valid, and is being taught as Gospel truth (to the exclusion of Gospel truth), is due to its being consonant with the rather vulgar values of the Enlightenment. Fundamental to it is belief in predetermined progress, with man and society steadily improving with the passage of time.
Darwinism, along with other determinist theories of modernity, such as Marxism, dovetails neatly with this purely fideistic beleif. Hence unquestioning belief in the Enlightenment has to presuppose similar faith in Darwinism, regardless of how much proof to the contrary is on offer. Far be it from me to denigrate unquestioning faith. However, persevering with it against all available evidence is hardly a sign of intelligence.
The same can be applied to any tenet that has come out of the Enlightenment. They are all incompatible with deep thought and an ability to analyse evidence and draw correct inference from it.
For example, the Enlightenment belief in the primacy of economics as a sufficient social and moral regulator has been proved wrong by numerous social and cultural disasters — and even by the current economic one. Contrary to what the Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith believed, the sum total of private interests by itself doesn’t always add up to public virtue. And a deficit in public virtue will inevitably hurt private interests, even those defined in narrow monetary terms.
Proceeding along Enlightenment lines will inevitably lead a thinker into an intellectual cul-de-sac. Even if he has a genius IQ.