Hi Pete, I'm sorry if the two paragraphs of mine below gave the impression that I thought the mandarinate system in China and the monastic system in Europe had genetic effects. I gave those as examples of systematic/significant selection of talent in previous times with, probably, significant economic effects. (The mandarins despite there being a lot of them -- and leaving offspring, too -- were still only a very small fraction of the general population. And as for monks, as you point out, there can't be any genes for celibacy by definition!)
You're quite right to point out that the monastic system in Europe would, if anything, have reduced the general intelligence of the population. However, the monastic orders, at their most dominant, only lasted for a few hundred years and, even at their most selective, they couldn't have chosen more than a very small proportion of the brightest children. There's enough (anecdotal) evidence that some particularly brilliant individual parents produce a string of talented progeny (the Darwins and Huxleys, for example, among others) but this doesn't seem to last for more than two or three generations and is another effect of the regression to the mean. If intelligence is the product of many genes (as seems likely) this regression is an inevitable consequence when genes are mixed each generation. But Europe does seem to give evidence of selection effects for intelligence. The Sephardic Jews (the descendants of those who migrated to Spain in the 8th to 12th century) have average European IQ scores, while Ashkenazi Jews (the descendants of those who migrated to Poland in the 13th century onwards) have distinctly higher IQs (one standard deviation) -- probably resulting from the savage persecutions of the 17th century onwards in central Europe and the preferential survival of the cleverest. (And it was predominantly Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to America in the 1860-1930 period -- with significant effects on American science, arts and, more recently, finance.) Keith At 14:55 03/07/02 -0700, you wrote: >On Mon, 01 Jul 2002, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >P.S. Let's remind ourselves that two of the most long-lasting and > >inventive economic systems in human history were the product of conscious > >talent selection from the masses. The first (approximately from 200BC to > > >1600/1700AD) was the mandarinate system of China whereby intelligent > >(and physically skilful) children (but only boys!) were selected by the > >local mandarins and then had to pass extremely gruelling examinations > >over many years before being given power. The other was the selection of > >bright boys from the masses by the monastic orders of Europe -- those > >orders being the main developers and innovators of medieval society, > >bringing immense tracts of swampy, mountainous land into cultivation or > >sheep farming, etc and making immense profits -- more than equivalent to > >the largest multinational corporations of today. > > >I suggest therefore that the same selection effect might be going on > >today (PV) >Hmmm. If we are talking about genetic selection, that european example >doesn't follow - those were _monks_ after all. In fact, if the process >was thorough, it seems to indicate that european progress occurred >in spite of a systematic culling of the best and the brightest from >the gene pool! It seems that a lengthy policy of dysgenics had no >lasting negative effect on the population of europe, ...or maybe it >did, and those of us from that region are the thicker because of it. > > -Pete Vincent ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
