Arthur Koestler - Less equal than others (1974)

 

Introduction

 

When Professor H. J. Eysenck was beaten up by a bunch of nitwits at the London School of Economics some time ago, he roused a wave of sympathy even among those scholars who disagree with his ideas. This book (see below) will predictably lose him much of that sympathy. Not on the grounds on which the L.S.E. gang attacked him: to call Hans Eysenck a Fascist or a 'reactionary' is simply laughable, and race is not even discussed in the book. It is nevertheless a book with a potentially harmful effect on psychology students, educationists and even politicians, who might take Eysenck's controversial interpretations of ambiguous statistics as the ultimate scientific truth about human nature. His thesis is, briefly, that intelligence is 80 per cent determined by heredity, which leaves only a small, 20-per-cent margin where environmental factors, including education, can exert their influence on child or adult. This puts man into a universe where genetic predestination rules almost supreme — where, in the words of the Koran, every man's destiny is fastened round his neck.