Biological Determinism

| Researchers have found that the female hippocampus tends to be larger than the male hippocampus. Based on evidence presented in the Critical Thinking box in the text, “ 'His ' and 'Her ' Brains?” you would be justified in asserting which of the following?1. Because of the differences in the size of the hippocampus, females will be

As an anthropologist, it was Broca’s job to study the human species. He collected information for years trying to answer the questions on everyone's mind in the 1800’s, what gender is smarter, therefore superior? Broca studied brain sizes to answer that question do to the fact that humans were declared the smartest species because we have bigger brains than animals. Broca declared that women “had smaller brains than men and, therefore, could not equal them in intelligence,” however, I would like to argue that. According to Women's Brains By Stephen Jay Gould, Broca’’s data was inconsistent. He used 292 male brains but only 140 female brains. He did not take in consideration weight, heath, height nor age into his observations, all facts that

Throughout this publication, Stephen Jay Gould tries to convince the reader of his argument that the claims that Broca made were simply outrageous. Even though Gould comments, “I have the greatest respect for Broca’s meticulous procedure. His numbers are sound.”, he refutes Broca’s, and his disciples, work. Gould uses a large amount of statistical data to counter Broca’s argument. He states that “In an analysis of the data for women, I found that, at an average male height and age, a woman’s brain would weight 1,212 grams. Correction for height and ages reduces Broca’s measured difference of 181 grams by more than a third, to 113 grams.” While Gould uses this to support his own data collection, he also exhibits data collected by Broca himself.

Brain is the most powerful and complicated structure of human organ. Human brain is totally spectacular and is the most valuable gift towards the people. Actually, there are subtle differences in the way male’s and female’s brains are structured and in the way they react to a particular event and stimuli. Men‘s brains on average is ten percent bigger than women’s and have four percent more cells. Somehow, women’s brains consist of more nerve cells and cellular connections, which make their brains more compact and smaller to be more effective and efficient. The differences in the brain structures that effect on male and female are most in their thinking ability, the communication skill, as well as the abilities in certain fields are our

      In contrast, Stephen Jay Gould, in "Women's Brains," questions the validity of Paul Broca's study (1824-80), a professor of clinical surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, who used unrefined techniques to prove the lower intelligence of women as compared to men (753). Having been convinced about the direct link between the intelligence of an individual and the size of brain, Broca used his knowledge of craniometry, the method of skull measurement, to make a relationship between the cranial capacity and the development of the brain. As Stephen Gould puts it, Broca based his arguments on his data, which he collected meticulously "from the autopsies he performed in four Parisian hospitals." He found the average weight of "292 male brains to be 1,325 grams, while 140 female brains averaged 1,144 grams, a difference of 14 percent of male brain's weight" (754). Broca took this to mean that women were born biologically inferior to men, whom nature endowed with intellectual superiority. According to Gould, this discovery fuelled acrid misogynist remarks and sarcasms: "The theologians had asked if women had a soul ... some scientists were ready to refuse them

“The first Cro-Magnon skull supported the theory that the brains have grown slightly smaller over the past tens of thousands of years. There are not any reasons supporting that Homo sapiens are less intelligent

Andrei Cimpian is a co-worker that studies the way people mind works. The society connects natural ability more with males than females. Children at ages 6 and 7 years old were picked to study how their minds work. They worked with 400 childrens with the ages 5-7 years old. The one gender smarter between men and women and the men are smarter than the women.

Human Ancestors, including the First apes, have a very small brain, but with the evolution of conduct, so did the human brain. The rapid development of human intelligence has been attributed to human-induced changes in the surrounding environment changes and the living environment. This led to the expansion of specific regions of the brain, greatly different human mature compared to our ancestors, genetic changes, which are just some of the changes have occurred in humans。

It has been found that there is little to no difference on cognitive ability based on sex (Hakim, 2006). How, then, have these ideas about femininity remained in popular discourse? It is argued that the schemas that are developed from birth, which influence initial reactions and the perception

There is currently no proof that those with a larger brain are smarter than lose with a smaller brain.

Spurzheim focused his writings more towards the relationship between the functions of the brain and how these functions differed between individuals of the human species. However, he understood that size and shape alone did not dictate mental capacity by stating, “It is indeed impossible, in animals of different species, and even in various individuals of the same species, to estimate innate mental dispositions by the absolute size of the brain” (9). The size of the brain was not seen as the measurement that would be used to estimate intellectual ability, but it did have an effect on the activity of the separate organs of the brain which then affected ability. Spurzheim did not use specific races in his book in order to make comparisons, but the published work before his sufficiently illustrated a strong sense of differentiation between races’ abilities. As a successor of the founder of phrenology, much of Spurzheim’s work was related to Franz Gall’s work which explicitly pointed out theoretical differences between

In Franz Boas’ studies, he demonstrated how ones race or biological behaviors are not determined by the size of one’s physical traits or biological genetics. The cranium, whether large or small, does not determine intelligence differences between various races. Many anthropologists believed

Cerebrum is the name of the top half of the brain and have two parts, right and left. Logic is solved in the left hemisphere and intuition is in the right one. The finding of Dr Verma is that women think between the two hemisphere and men think in only one part. She believes the gender differences in abilities, such as women’s social competence compared to men’s more intense focus on a limited area can be explained by these

Introduction Many studies show that larger brain size predicts greater intelligence. The studies show that on average men have approximately 4IQ points higher than women due to larger head circumference (HC). The greater IQ is generally formed after the age of 16 since women’s brains stop forming at this age but men’s continue to develop and grow. The longer growth period leads to more head circumference and brain mass which has been found be significantly correlated with higher intelligence. Even in the elderly, head circumference has been found to be positively and significantly correlated with intelligence (Schofield, Logroscino, Andrews, Albert, & Stern, 1997; Tisserand, Bosma, Van Boxtel, & Jolles, 2001). The larger HC is also believed to house more neurons which help in the speed of the information processing due to more synaptic connections (Pakkenberg & Gundersen, 1997). In general, general intelligence (G) is the best predictor of intelligence. In a Wall Street Journal article in 1994, 52 leading psychologists defined intelligence as “a very general mental capacity which, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience” (Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13); others have defined intelligence as the “sum total of all cognitive abilities” (Stankov & Roberts, 1997, p. 76). In all cases, males have tested higher on g than females leading researchers to believe

Men need more neurons to control their greater muscle mass and larger body size, thus generally have a larger brain.