L'Étude Expérimentale de L'Intelligence

Paris: C Reinwald, 1903. First Edition.. Original printed green wrappers.. Very good; small bookseller's sticker on the front wrapper; untrimmed.. 8vo, [6], 309, [3 - contents] pp. + one plate.

Binet's famous book in which he developed his ideas for a new structure for analyzing human thinking. The book is based on the experiments with his own daughters. He gave them problems to solve but also demanded an explanation for the solution they proffered for each question. The tests resulted in new ideas concerning human reasoning and its independence with respect to images. As a result of this work the French government commissioned him to develop (truncated) a system to measure for intelligence to be used within the public education system in order to identify children who needed help in learning. Despite his protests the tests and method of 'scaling' he developed soon became the absolute measurement of a child's ability, i.e., the I.Q. test. The book offered here is the intellectual foundation of this development. DSB II, 131-'32; see Gould, Mismeasure, pp. 146-'58. (Inventory #: 1657)