Women’s Brains

1. Gould’s purpose in this essay is to refute the false claims that scientists, such as Paul Broca, have made about women being less intelligent because their brains are smaller. Gould calls Broca’s credibility into question when he brings up his data and conclusions that he drew from it. Broca claims that women are less intelligent because their brains appear to be smaller, however, he failed to take into consideration the age, height, weight, and disease of the subject. The author’s goal is to reevaluate these numbers and prove that women are just as smart as men.
2. Gould uses logos in his essay by citing other sources and using exact calculations. When he discusses Broca’s data, he doesn’t disregard it, rather, he uses it in order to make his own set of data. He looks at various factors that go into weighing a brain and states that his “correction for height and age reduces Broca’s measured difference of 181 grams by more than a third, to 113 grams” (1388). He then takes this number and looks at other factors that could be affecting it. He realizes that “the corrected 113 gram difference is surely too large; the true figure is probably close to zero and may as well favor women as men” (1388). By including this data, Gould uses logos, which supports men and women being equal.
3. I agree with Gould’s essay, not because I’m a female, but because after further investigation, he concluded that women were equal in intelligence. It took research in order for him to come to this conclusion. He didn’t just accept Boca’s work as fact, rather, he analyzed it for himself. His essay’s goal is to show that women are equally as smart as men. An example of this in my life would be me and my friend Zach. We both have very similar interests and wish to go into the science field. We are equally motivated and driven. To me, we are on the same playing ground and I do not see him as any more or less intelligent than me.