In 1904, French psychologist Alfred Binet was appointed to a ministerial commission investigating the problem of children lagging in school. Binet’s approach was to turn to the psychological laboratory to create an instrument that might differentiate unambiguously those who were of subnormal intellect from those not. A year later, in partnership with physician Théodore Simon, Binet unveiled their first intelligence scale, which when revised in 1908 became the precursor of all modern intelligence measuring instruments.

This proliferation of modern intelligence tests can make it seem almost inevitable that intelligence would be and should be measured. And yet, examined historically, quantifying intelligence is a recent trend. In this lecture, John Carson will explore the historical attempts to isolate and quantify ‘intelligence’. In particular, he will examine how the concept of intelligence as a measurable individual attribute emerged out of a confluence of developments in craniometry, statistics, and “scientific” psychology, which drew upon and sustained racial, ethnic, and social hierarchies.

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