Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Getting to grips with the thought styles
- Part II Fixing real people
- Appendix A: Signs and codes
- Appendix B: The amygdala: the brain’s almond
- Appendix C: Statistical primer
- Appendix D: The definition of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
- Appendix E: Critique of Cunha et al, 2010
- References
- Index
six - Perfecting people: the inexorable rise of prevention science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Getting to grips with the thought styles
- Part II Fixing real people
- Appendix A: Signs and codes
- Appendix B: The amygdala: the brain’s almond
- Appendix C: Statistical primer
- Appendix D: The definition of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
- Appendix E: Critique of Cunha et al, 2010
- References
- Index
Summary
A new type of law came into being, analogous to the laws of nature, but pertaining to people. These new laws were expressed in terms of probability. They carried with them the connotations of normalcy and deviations from the norm. The cardinal concept of the psychology of the Enlightenment had been, simply, human nature. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was being replaced by something different: normal people. (Hacking, 1990: 1)
In the previous chapters we have outlined how biological sciences have historically offered, and continue to promise, new means by which the State can attempt to render the behaviours and frailties of its citizens tractable. As Hacking indicates above, this transformation also needed statistics and maths. It needed quantity. In 1815, Paris had more suicide than London – a phenomenon thus in need of an explanation. A preoccupation with moral degeneracy had led to the collection of thousands of statistics on suicide in France which spawned Durkheim's painstaking sociology on the matter. Statistics need categories: one cannot measure something without a name. Social engineering is made possible by counting the bits of society we don't want or which offend our sensibilities, and imagining technologies for their amelioration. Hacking (1990) describes how two uses of the concept of ‘normal’ emerge from the 19th century onwards.
The normal stands indifferently for what is typical, the unenthusiastic objective average, but it also stands for what has been, good health, and for what shall be, our chosen destiny. This is why the benign and sterile sounding word ‘normal’ has become one of the most powerful ideological tools of the twentieth century. (Hacking, 1990: 169)
‘Normal’ is a crucial concept in shifting the emphasis from ‘is’ to ‘ought’: utopian projects need both kinds of normal, in particular to effect the augmentative shift from the typical to the perfectible ideal. As we anticipated in the previous chapter, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen the rise of ‘prevention science’. Uniting both versions of ‘normal’ within the grand project of human improvement, the paradigm seeks to ensure people achieve normalcy by intervening to stop damage in its tracks, and also to ensure optimal human flourishing. Prevention science could build better people.
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- Blinded by ScienceThe Social Implications of Epigenetics and Neuroscience, pp. 129 - 156Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2017