James R. Flynn, Who Found We Are Getting Smarter, Dies at 86
A philosopher who moved into psychology and studied I.Q., he showed that as society grows more technical, human intellectual abilities expand to meet the challenge.
James R. Flynn in 2016. His research helped discredit the theory that differences in performance on I.Q. tests between Black and white people were a result of genetic differences.Credit.Tom Pilston/Panos Pictures, via Redux
Jan. 25, 2021
In 1978, James R. Flynn, a political philosopher at the University of Otago, in New Zealand, was writing a book about what constituted a “humane” society. He considered “inhumane” societies as well dictatorships, apartheid states and, in his reading, came across the work of Arthur R. Jensen, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.