Reading over these posts, I would like to point ut that, IMHO, working in a scientific millieu does not make you a scientist. To me, a scientist is someone who pushes the envelope of current scientific knowledge. These are your “real scientists;” the ones who get the Nobel prize. And in this group, Jews are represented way beyound their population statistics.
The other group are the “technicians” (myself included) who use the current and developing body of science to advance a variety of endeavors. They may make a crucial discovery using established tools and practices, but this is really just incremental research and discovery. This group conforms more to overall population patterns, and is what Barbarian is seeing when he says
Actually, in my own anecdotal experience, Asians, (particularly mainland chinese) are over-represented in this class.
Finally, I can think of another reason why Jews are “over-represented” in intellectual pursuits: As noted above, education is considered to be the ultimate calling in Judaism. Unlike Catholicism, its most learned clerics are allowed (expected, actually) to marry and have children. Smart parents= smart kids.
I’ve heard this as a reason cited for the general above-average IQ that Jews (supposedly) have. The idea goes that the more intellectually curious Jews who consequently studied and were good at it probably had higher levels of intelligence than the rest of their semitic brethren. These guys were urged to marry more often and produce “pure” Jewish offspring, as opposed to the uneducated class of Jews (NOT that these guys were prevented from breeding, mind you). This gave rise to a more generally intelligent class of Jews, who sought after academia (especially in flourishing fields like the sciences).
I cannot offer you a cite just yet, but will attempt to look for it. So for now, just treat it as further speculation :).
You’d be hard put to name a scientist or mathematican of note with a religous Jewish upbringing, much less a fully-observant Jewish scientist/mathematican. Infact personally of all time greats of mathematicians and scientists of Jewish ancestry I could not name a single one who had a religious Jewish upbringing, but could name at least two (Cantor and Pauli) who were the product of a Christian-convert upbringing. So it seems odd to name the Jewish religion as the primary factor.
To those who doubt why the the questiom of the OP is a valid question just look at the primary innovators of relativity and quantum theory (Bohr, Born, Einstein, Minkowski, Pauli, Von Neumann were all of Jewish ancestry to name but a few).
Here you tread into the speculative that both has little support and uncomfortable associations.
There is no evidence that there is a significant genetic difference between Jews and non-Jews viv-a-vis intelligence. There is no evidence that I am aware of that supports the contention that Jews have, on average, a higher IQ, nor even would the presence of such evidence mandate a genetic explanation.
Invoking genetics, in the absence of any evidence, has obvious reasons to have an icky feel. One must doubt that the numbers of Christians who went into the priesthood had a substantial impact on the intelligence of the overall gene pool. Islam, Buddahism, etc. have no prohibition of religious leaders procreating. The explanation fails on many fronts.
Complex,
Jewish culture has been invoked, not religion per se. Religion is but one influence upon the culture. Einstein was non-observant, but he was still a product of a culture. Of course, the very observant were less likely to put their intellectual effort into secular pursuits and interactions. Extremely observant Jews in history could be quite insular themselves, and still sometimes are. They were more likely engage in study of Torah and Talmud as pursuits of intellectual passion than they were to engage in secular interests. It was indeed when Jewish culture, along with its trunkload of influences from other cultures around the world, intermingled with its host cultures, that the greats were produced. German Jewery had these assimilating Jews in large numbers as did America in the last century. (America, in itself, is a model for the advantage of intermixing different cultural influences right up against each other and pulling out new ideas from the resultant hodgepodge stew … but that’s another thread.)
This is purely a statistical quibble, but I just wanted to point out that in terms of the OPs hypothesis “non-jews” is not a very valid grouping. In theory, if we break down this group we might find out that several other sub-groups (Sikhs or Animists or Catholics etc) leave Jews way behind…
In terms of the meat of the argument, I believe as has already been said that the Jewish intellectual tradition has played a big part here, as well as circumstance driven linguistic ability (access to knowledge) and mobility.
WC: *Jewish people are alot more likely to have a graduate or undergraduate degree than non-jews. *
According to your link, there are a couple of other social factors involved for US Jews as well:
Geographic distribution: “The Jewish population is skewed to the Northeast (43%), where proportionately more than twice as many Jews as non-Jews (19%) reside.” Lotsa educational/scientific institutions in this region.
Socioeconomic status: “The median household income of the Jewish population is about $50,000, which is higher than the approximately $42,000 median for all U.S. households reported by the Census Bureau. A fifth (19%) of all Jewish households are low income, defined as $25,000 or less per year, compared to 29% among all U.S. households.”
Krokodil:As I understand it, Jewish tradition includes no threat of Hell for teaching Darwinism or researching stem cells.
As I understand it, it’s generally true that the more liberal forms of Jewish doctrine, and of course non-religious Judaism, don’t have any theological conflicts with modern scientific theories. However, I think some forms of Orthodox Judaism reject evolutionary theory. We’d need cmkeller or somebody to give us the details.
I think all these answers are good. One detail not mentioned is the cultural and religious style of learning in Judaism as well as the attitudes towards the “dictates” of God. Firstly, Jews are encouraged to argue with God as opposed to “believing.” Thus, there is an innate openness to scientific questioning. Whether someone is raised in a religious home or an assimilated one, that idea will be carried down. In addition, the whole style of learning in the yeshivas is based on learning and arguing over texts with a study partner. This arguing is framed as an "argument for the sake of God. In other words, struggling with texts and intellectual pursuit is seen as a way of getting closer to the divine. This definitely carries into Jewish culture, whether religious or not. As a teacher, I definitely notice the difference between a class of Jewish kids and non-Jewish. The Jewish kids always have something to say and want to be verbally engaged. That’s my additional 2 cents.
Dov Gabbay. He’s both a well known theoretical computer scientist (in fact, he’s about to break the record for most publications in the field) and a rabbi. He’s also formed a “dynasty”. He has two sons, both of which are young by academic standards, but very well known in their fields; one a philosopher, one a theoretical computer scientist.
I’ll leave this thread open for now, but please be aware this thread is more than six years old and some of the posters in it (including the OP) haven’t been on the board in a long time.
One of my Jewish friends has a theory that Judaism self selects for intelligence.
His theory was that centuries of persecution encouraged all the dumb Jews to convert to Catholicism during the middle ages. Why suffer persecution for being a member of a religion that you aren’t very good at to begin with when all you had to do was get baptised and BAM, goodbye to troubles you really don’t need?
Not to say that some dumb ones didn’t stay or that some of the smart ones didn’t leave but being a dumb Jew in the middle ages meant that everyone including Jews didn’t have a very high opinion of you.
The combination of this genetic selection combined with academic culture (which survives the loss of religiosity in many cases) might explain some of the skew.
I’m not sure if it’s universal, but it’s a pretty wide-spread characteristic of societies around the world that they have a minority group whose members
1 - overachieve intellectually and commercially
2 - have informal social links to other parts of the world
3 - are widely disliked and distrusted by the majority population, which distrust leads to
4 - are occasionally officially persecuted by the government, said persecution ranging from low-level harassment right up through genocide
Off the top of my head, I can think of the overseas Chinese in southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa (and Fiji), and Lebanese Shi’ites in West Africa. Jews were in that position in Europe and the US at the time that Europe went through a scientific revolution.
Well, for once the post I composed in my head when starting this thread wasn’t one I posted 6 years ago.
I suspect that another reason for this is that Judaism hasn’t seen the Bible as a book with only one interpretation. Arguments about the meaning are encouraged, not discouraged, and not just for the top theologians. This translates very nicely to science, where the same type of discussion is part of the process, along with the need to rebel against things that everyone knows to be true.
I think there is also a tradition that a smart student is a good catch, even if they have no money. My great-grandfather was a highly religious student of the Bible, who didn’t appear to make much money but who had lots of kids. Catholics had plenty of smart kids also, but they became priests which genetically isn’t too helpful.
Finally, we suck at sports, so what else should we be doing?
I recall reading something along the lines of the bulk of 19th century inventors of patented mechanical gadgets in America having German last names or traceable German roots. Maybe that’s not something people wonder about nowadays when papers in prestigious journals seem to many like the measure of man’s achievement, but yeah, another example of underlying biological reality meets a market niche type of situation. Lots of Ethiopians in the marathons, Germans in mechanical engineering and Jews in abstract disciplines not requiring stellar spatial IQ - who would have thought
You, my good sir, need to read World on Fire. In huge parts of the world, high-achieving minorities dominate markets, and are then discriminated against through political power (from affirmative action policies to riots.) Most people don’t seem to realize how unusual the ethnic distribution of power in the US is in the world.
I doubt that played a real role but it’s amusing.