Gould's argument on reification purports to get at the philosophical foundation of the field. He claims that general intelligence, defined as the factor common to different cognitive abilities, is merely a mathematical abstraction; hence if we consider it a measurable attribute we are reifying it, falsely converting an abstraction into an 'entity' or a 'thing'-variously referred to as 'a hard, quantifiable thing,' 'a quantifiable fundamental particle,' 'a thing in the most direct, material sense.' Here he has dug himself a deep hole.: Indeed, this whole argument is fantastic. The scientist does not measure 'material things': He measures properties (such as length or mass), sometimes of a single 'thing' (however defined), and sometimes of an organized collection of things, such as a machine, a biological organ, or an organism. In a particularly complex collection, the brain, some properties (i.e., specific functions) have been traced to narrowly-localized regions (such as the sensory or motor nuclei connected to particular parts of the body).

Science·Philosophy·Traits·Intelligence·Abstraction·Measurement