Origins of Intelligence: Infancy and Early Childhood

A preface is an excellent opportunity for an editor to speak directly to the reader and share with him the goals, hopes, struggles, and produc- tion of a volume such as this. It seems to me that I have an important obligation to tell you the origins of this volume. This is no idle chatter, but rather an integral part of scientific inquiry. It is important before delving into content, theory, and methodology to talk about motivation, values, and goals. Indeed, it is always necessary to explicate from the very beginning of any intellectual and scientific inquiry the implicit assumptions governing that exercise. Failure to do so is not only an ethical but a scientific failure. We learn, albeit all too slowly, that science is a moral enterprise and that values must be explicitly stated, removing from the shadows those implicit beliefs that often motivate and deter- mine our results. No better or more relevant example can be found than in the review of the implicit assumptions of the early IQ psychometri- cians in this country (see Kamins book, The Science and Politics of IQ, 1975).