A History of Intelligence and "Intellectual Disability": The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe by C. F. Goodey (review)

C. F. Goodey has written an interesting and thought-provoking monograph on intelligence and the lack thereof. He has an easy, enjoyable style, and is not afraid to play with ideas, both constructs from the present and the past—Early Modern, in particular, but those stand cheek-by-jowl with ancient, medieval, and modern illustrations. At times humorous, at its core A History of Intelligence and "Intellectual Disability" examines what Goodey calls "status modes" of honor, grace, and intelligence. His premise is that people naturally want their public face to be presented in the best light, and to that end they engage in "status bidding," using these modes to either build themselves up or tear others down around them so that they appear brighter. He writes, "My starting hypothesis, therefore, is that intelligence and intellectual disability, likewise intelligent people and intellectually disabled people, are not natural kinds but historically contingent forms of human self-representation and social reciprocity, of relatively recent historical origin" (2).

In his theory of "status bidding," Goodey explains that the intellectual bid is only one part of the "meritocratic mind-set" (63), which is the vying for status based on real or conceptual wealth, lineage, and learning. An individual's social status or honor might be a matter of his birthright (e.g., "my great aunt's second cousin was a Duke or I am completely chaste" [64]). An individual also had religious status or grace; perhaps they had the financial means to support the church, buying religious clout. Other scholars have studied these concepts' social and religious status, but Goodey adds this new layer of a status of intelligence to the mix. "In our own meritocratic mind-set, intelligence too belongs on this level; it is something to be called upon as concrete collateral when claiming status, and is assumed to compete for recognition on the same taxonomic level with (for example) wealth" (64). Goodey's argument is strong. He makes the claim for this model in both directions—from the path of those who move up and from the path of those who keep others down. On the one hand, those performing well at education, demonstrating not only knowledge or collected information but also speed at recall or tasks, have social collateral, and with that can become upwardly mobile. On the other hand, "When [Richard] Mulcaster [Elizabeth's education policy adviser] discusses his own school's admissions policy, he seems uncharacteristically muddled." Discussing "the difference of wits" in children, he writes about the "natural ability" of the gentry and the "natural towardness" of the "non-gentle" (78). Goodey impresses upon his reader that Early Modern society worked at keeping the low in status down. Those without the advantage of wealth should not, in the minds of the Early Modern "haves" (as opposed to the "have-nots"), be given ways to bring up their social standing only to compete in a world they would not understand.

When women or "non-gentle persons" were lifted up, given an education, it "was to remove honour from men and to strip reason of its inherent maleness." Goodey puts it well when he writes, "As with class, so with gender" (97). Females were given little encouragement to become educated persons. They were slighted not only as the "weaker" sex but also as being much like the poor—in medieval and Early Modern terms—"base" in their abilities, comparable only to children.

In terms of disabled intelligence and not simply monetarily poor social standing—the idiota, for example—Goodey implies that those unable to think well (clear and fast) cannot compete for higher status. He examines ideas surrounding fast and slow thinking from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, contrasting the time and labor or effort involved in a task...