Criticism
Recent research indicates that whole brain size is a better measure of cognitive abilities than EQ for primates at least.
The concept of EQ as a measure of intelligence can be strongly criticised in a very simple argument. The brains of large dinosaurs were frequently tiny. Stegosaurus, weighing about the same as an average elephant, had a comparatively small brain—160 g compared to about 5 kg for an elephant. While Stegosaurus undoubtedly was an animal of very limited behavioural complexity, this fact undermines the idea on which EQ is based - that a larger animal requires a larger brain to look after a large body.
If Stegosaurus could survive with this tiny brain, it would seem that any animal with anything bigger must be using it for non-essential abilities. However, mammalian evolution has repeatedly improved the effectiveness of a bodily function by innervating it more; the digestive and immune systems are examples. Thus, while an elephant has a much larger brain than a Stegosaurus, a substantial part of the excess brain is bound up in bodily functions rather than cognitive functions. This can account for some differences between classes of animals, but not species within a class. More associative brain tissue, cortex, still indicates a level of mental activity above the reptilian form. Some of these abilities may be sensory and/or physical, and some may be intellectual. The actual intelligence of an animal therefore depends on the size of the brain and the proportion of the brain that is used for intellectual abilities, rather than advanced sensory or physical skills. Critics point out that EQ gives only a very rough estimate of these proportions.
Read more about this topic: Encephalization Quotient
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)