• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Chronological arrogance

Quiddity

UndertheInfluenceofGiants
The study — titled "Intelligence" — claims that we in the twenty-first century have an average IQ fourteen points lower than the Victorians, a calculation based on how long the brain takes to react. The scientist author claims that this is the result of a backward form of natural selection, with the most intelligent people tending to have fewer children (usually for the wrong reasons), while others now tend to live longer. Some of this smacks of the false science of eugenics, but it does strike at what has been called chronological arrogance, which assumes that people today are smarter than those of the past.

Chronological arrogance
 

ZooGirl02

Well-Known Member
That is a really interesting article. Thank you for posting it.

That said, I think it is a fallacy or something to say that modern people are more intelligent than in the past. Yes, there is more knowledge now than there was in the past but you have to take into account the fact that we have been accumulating knowledge for as long as mankind has existed. Therefore, just because we have more knowledge now than in the past doesn't mean that we discovered more knowledge during the past century. It simply means that the amount of knowledge has piled up over the millennia and now we have more than they did two centuries ago just the same as those in the 1700s had more knowledge than those in the 1500s.
 
Top