Shockley on Eugenics and Race - William B. Shockley (author), Roger Pearson (editor), Arthur R. Jensen (preface)
Shockley on Eugenics and Race
A Compilation of Post-Transistor Socio-Biological Papers, Lectures, and Controversial Population Hypotheses
A Compilation of Post-Transistor Socio-Biological Papers, Lectures, and Controversial Population Hypotheses
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Shockley on Eugenics and Race
- Author: William B. Shockley
- Editor: Roger Pearson
- Preface Author: Arthur R. Jensen
- Publisher: Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington D.C.
- Publication Date: 1992 (Variously logged as January or September 1, 1992)
- ISBN-13: 9781878465030 (ISBN-10: 1878465031)
- Edition Details: First Trade Paperback Edition. Out of Print (OOP). A highly scarce, controversial primary source asset in the history of science.
- Binding: Original publisher's perfect-bound heavy card wrappers (softcover).
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), approximately 304 pages. Features standalone graphs, statistical correlation charts, and reprints of academic correspondence.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
- Exterior / Wraps: The original trade paperback wrappers remain flat, crisp, and exceptionally bright. Retains excellent gloss density on the face panels with square corner tips. The spine panel is completely perfect, rigid, straight, and entirely uncreased, reflecting no standard reader bending or reading stress lines.
- Interior: The internal text block is robustly bound, clean, and tight. The pages are pristine, white, and completely free of reader margin notes, underlinings, highlights, or dog-ears.
- Provenance: Clean archival state; entirely free of institutional university library stamps, pocket attachments, or remainder marks.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published by the specialized imprint Scott-Townsend in 1992, Shockley on Eugenics and Race is an out-of-print, highly sought-after primary source compiling the controversial post-transistor writings, speeches, and "thought experiments" of Nobel laureate physicist William B. Shockley. Edited by Roger Pearson and introduced by educational psychologist Arthur Jensen, this volume aggregates the socio-biological polemics that defined Shockley’s second career. Shockley argued that modern welfare policies caused "dysgenic" demographic trends in the United States, claiming that individuals with lower IQ scores were outbreeding those with higher intelligence profiles. To address this, he famously advocated for further scientific tracking of genetic intelligence factors and proposed highly contentious, cash-incentivized voluntary sterilization plans for low-scoring individuals.
From a historical perspective, this volume is a key archival document in the mid-to-late 20th-century race and intelligence controversy. Shockley's 1960s declarations helped spark a decades-long academic and public debate that set the stage for later publications like Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve (1994). Today, the global scientific consensus—reaffirmed by the American Psychological Association and researchers exploring the "Flynn effect"—firmly establishes that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups, attributing observed gaps instead to environmental, socio-economic, and cultural factors. Consequently, claims of inherent racial hierarchy are recognized as pseudoscientific and central to the history of scientific racism. This rare, clean copy serves as an important, objective primary reference work for serious historians of science, sociologists tracing the rhetoric of eugenics, and institutional libraries tracking modern intellectual histories.
Subject Profile: William B. Shockley
William Bradford Shockley (1910–1989) was an American physicist, inventor, and co-recipient of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in developing the transistor at Bell Labs. His subsequent commercial work helped give birth to Silicon Valley. However, his later career at Stanford University was heavily overshadowed by his fixation on eugenics, dysgenics, and racial intelligence differentials. His aggressive advocacy of these unverified biological theories alienated his peers, stripped him of academic standing, and turned his later life into a focal point of intense sociological controversy.
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