Æthelflæd - Lady of the Mercians

England in 878 AD

Æthelflæd, the daughter of King Alfred, was a significant figure in early British history. From the time of her husband’s death in 911, until her own death in 918, she ruled the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. Although her title was ‘Lady of the Mercians’, it seems her role was that of queen, an unusual position for a woman in early Britain. The name ‘Æthelflæd’ means ‘noble beauty’.

Æthelflæd showed herself to be an excellent military tactician. She expanded Mercia’s territories to the north, east and west. Even during her husband’s life, building projects and treaties were carried out in her name. After his death, the pace of activity seems to have accelerated: according to a BBC article, numerous towns like Bridgnorth, Tamworth and Stafford were fortified by her, to secure roads and rivers.

In the 9th century most of eastern England was ruled by Danish Vikings, in an area known as the Danelaw. In 917 Æthelflæd captured the Danelaw borough of Derby, and in 918 the Danelaw borough of Leicester. Also in 918, Viking-occupied York offered to accept her rule; however, she died before this could come to fruition.

According to some accounts, she actually led her armies into battle. If true, this would make her an even more remarkable figure, and one of only a handful of women from history who were military leaders.

Æthelflæd seems to have been unfairly neglected by historians. In Michael Wood’s popular book about Saxon Britain, In Search of the Dark Ages, she is mentioned only as being the aunt of King Æthelstan.

The 12th century historian Henry of Huntingdon celebrated Æthelflæd in a poem.*

O Elfleda potens, O terror virgo virorum,
Victrix naturae, nomine digna viri.
Te, quo splendidior fieres, natura puellam,
Te probita fecit nomen habere viri.

[Heroic Elflede! great in martial fame,
A man in valour, woman though in name;
Thee warlike hosts, thee, nature too obey’d,
Conqu’ror o’er both, though born by sex a maid.]

* Extract from poem in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum. Translation by Tom Arnold, 1879. Map of England courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Abolition of Genius

This is a new, hardback edition of Charles McCreery’s book, The Abolition of Genius.

The book contains an analysis of the relationship between genius and money. It proposes the controversial thesis that the possession of a private income, either by the genius or by his or her patron, has been a necessary condition of the productivity of the great majority of geniuses throughout history.

McCreery’s analysis is illustrated with many instructive, and sometimes surprising, examples. Among the individuals whose financial circumstances are discussed in the book are those shown on the front cover: Wagner, Hume, Einstein, Galileo, Kant, Schopenhauer, Schubert and Nietzsche.

There is a Look-Inside function on the Amazon pages.
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‘This is a courageous, well-argued and timely book’ – Professor H.J. Eysenck

Stephen Jay Gould and The Bell Curve

If ability is at least partly inherited, then it is likely that social classes will arise. If social class is partly explained by genes, then the theory that class is entirely due to ‘unfair’ advantages is false.

If it is not known how much social class is due to genetic and how much to other factors, then it cannot be assumed that intervention will move things towards a ‘fairer’ position. This may explain the reactions of writers such as Stephen Jay Gould to The Bell Curve.*

One of the central arguments of The Bell Curve is that America’s upper class is an elite with relatively high average IQ, which has arisen because intelligence is partly heritable. Gould asserts that this argument requires

the validity of four shaky premises, [i.e. intelligence] must be depictable as a single number, capable of ranking people in linear order, genetically based, and effectively immutable. If any of these premises are false, the entire argument collapses.**

The validity of The Bell Curve’s explanation of class does not depend on intelligence being ‘immutable’. Gould seems to be confusing questions of fact with questions of policy.

Nor does the explanation depend on intelligence being depictable as a single number. Whether intelligence, or ability in general, is heritable is a separate question from how well a single variable, such as IQ, is capable of measuring it.


* Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Free Press 1994.
** Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, Penguin 1997, p.368.

Financing special education

From Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man:

The difference between strict hereditarians and their opponents is not, as some caricatures suggest, the belief that a child’s performance is all inborn or all a function of environment and learning. [...] The differences are more a matter of social policy and educational practice.

Hereditarians view their measures of intelligence as markers of permanent, inborn limits. Children, so labelled, should be sorted, trained according to their inheritance and channelled into professions appropriate for their biology. Mental testing becomes a theory of limits.

Antihereditarians [...] test in order to identify and help. Without denying the evident fact that not all children, whatever their training, will enter the company of Newton and Einstein, they emphasize the power of creative education to increase the achievements of all children, often in extensive and unanticipated ways. [...]

A partially inherited low IQ might be subject to extensive improvement through proper education. And it might not. The mere fact of its heritability permits no conclusion. *

The debate about heritability of IQ has become less about the science of whether, and to what extent, intelligence is inherited; and more about the politics of whether resources should be devoted to helping those with a relatively low measured IQ to ‘catch up’.

What Gould, and others, tend to omit from their discussions is the question of whether ‘should’ in this context means voluntary or compulsory contributions.

It might mean that people should be encouraged to donate to voluntary organisations who would then provide what Gould refers to above as ‘proper education’. In practice, however, it usually means that the government should devote tax revenue to the problem, implying that the ‘contributions’ are to be collected coercively.

* Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, Penguin 1997, pp.182-183, 186.