The Rhythm of the West: A Biohistory of the Modern Era AD 1600 to the Present

Description

Aurelio José Figueredo; Matthew Alexandar Sarraf; Steven Hertler; Heitor Barcellos Ferreira Fernandes; Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre Is Western civilization generally progressing or declining? Optimists point to high levels of wealth and subjective well-being and low levels of poverty and mortality, alongside over a century of mostly sustained economic and cognitive growth - the latter reflected in the three point per decade increase in IQ test performance over past decades, known as the Flynn effect. But contemporary research indicates that in recent decades the Flynn effect has faltered and gone into reverse. Something, then, has clearly gone awry. The Rhythm of the West offers a rigorous and empirically robust theory to elucidate this adverse turn of fortune. Prior to the British industrial revolution and the end of the preceding Little Ice Age, life throughout Western Europe was brutally difficult. Harsh environments with scarce resources forced European populations to compete with one another for survival and expansion. Unpleasant as this was, it laid the groundwork for an advance to the prosperous industrial age that was to follow, the relaxed existential conditions of which enabled the development of specialized economic niches and specialized cognitive skills, with the Flynn effect emerging as a consequence of the latter. Inter-group competition favored or selected for those populations highest in general intelligence (g) and intra-group altruism. These traits are in fact foundational to advanced civilizations, but when the effects of industrialization undid the circumstances engendering inter-group competition, selection shifted such that it now favors lower rather than higher levels of g. Furthermore, mild industrial and post-industrial environments have permitted the unprecedented accumulation of harmful mutations in Western populations The implications for the future of the West are dire, making the authors' findings all the more worthy of serious attention. [From the book's Amazon page] 1.0 Introduction — 1 1.1 Background and Overview: Biological Pessimism and Optimism — 1 1.1.1 Malthus 1.1.2 Galton 1.1.3 Connecting Malthus and Galton 1.1.4 Rejection of Malthus 1.1.5 Rejection of Galton 1.1.6 Superseded 1.1.7 Flynn Effect as Exemplar 1.1.8 Breaks in the Narrative 1.1.9 Neo-Declinism 1.1.10 The Present Study 1.2 Meta-Theoretical Foundations — 24 1.2.1 Life history theory 1.2.2 The evolution of general intelligence (g) 1.2.3 Multi-level selection theory 1.2.4 The eugenic phase: Group conflict and the role of eminent individuals in promoting group-level fitness 1.2.5 The dysgenic phase: The breakdown of group selection and the onset of individual selection for lower heritable general intelligence (g.h) 1.2.6 The relation between slowing life history speed and social “progress” 1.2.7 The relation between social “progress” and mutation accumulation 1.2.8 The co-occurrence model 1.3 Empirical Foundations — 47 1.3.1 The dysgenesis syndrome 1.3.2 Elementary cognitive tasks (ECTs) 1.3.3 WM measures 1.3.4 Conventional psychometric measures 1.3.5 Historiometric data: Macro-innovation rates and eminent individuals 1.3.6 Flynn effect indicators 2.0 The Nexus 200 Analysis — 57 2.1 The Nexus 200 Methods — 58 2.1.1 Measures 2.1.1.1 Heritable general intelligence (g.h) 2.1.1.1.1 RTs 2.1.1.1.2 WM 2.1.1.1.3 High-difficulty vocabulary item usage 2.1.1.1.4 Per capita macro-innovation rates 2.1.1.1.5 Descent of Man altruism words 2.1.1.2 Specialized abilities (s.e) 2.1.1.2.1 Short-term memory (STM) 2.1.1.2.2 Low-difficulty vocabulary item usage 2.1.1.2.3 Psycholinguistic easy words 2.1.1.2.4 Concretization in language use 2.1.1.2.5 Micro-innovation rate (GDP per capita) 2.1.1.3 Somatic modification (s.m) 2.1.1.3.1 Male Fluctuating Asymmetry (FA) 2.1.1.3.2 Sinistrality Prevalence 2.1.1.3.3 Body Mass Index (BMI) 2.1.1.3.4 Height 2.1.1.3.5 Brain Mass 2.1.2 Data Aggregation 2.1.2.1 Chronometric aggregation of common factors underlying temporal covariation 2.1.2.1.1 Psychometric Data Aggregation 2.1.2.1.2 Meta-Analytic Aggregation 2.1.2.1.3 Chronometric Data Aggregation 2.2 Nexus 200 Results — 68 2.2.1 Nested MLM comparisons 3.0 The Nexus 400 Analysis — 74 3.1 The Nexus 400 Methods — 76 3.1.1 Measures 3.1.1.1 Mean global temperatures 3.1.1.2 The Altruism Words 3.1.1.3 Data on war fatalities 3.1.1.4 Estimate of the Britannic proportion of the world population 3.2 Nexus 400 Results — 77 3.2.1 Measurement Models 3.2.2 Structural Models 4.0 General Discussion — 84 4.1 The Nexus 200 Discussion — 84 4.1.1 Nexus 200 Limitations 4.2 The Nexus 400 Discussion — 91 4.2.1 Nexus 400 Limitations 5.0 General Conclusion — 95 5.1 Rudyard Kipling and Queen Victoria’s Paternalistic Empire — 96 5.2 Broader Implications of the Nexus 200 and Nexus 400 Results — 98 Appendix I: Losing Lamarck and the Left — 103 Appendix II: Life History Evolution — 107 Appendix III: Multi-Level Selection Theory — 110 Endnotes — 117 References — 120 Index — 165 Data Supplement — 170