But apparently there are people who believe they can do just that. 

Like the psychologists who tacitly claim that they can measure someone's Intelligence Quotient, better known as his or her IQ. 

The trouble is that intelligence is a subjective idea. And you can't measure subjective ideas. You can only measure things. 

Which explains why I was astonished by the controversy generated several months ago by a book entitled “The Bell Curve.” 

In that work, the authors suggested that there is a relationship between intelligence and race, and that some races are more intelligent than others. The implication being, of course, that intelligence can be quantified. 
In no time at all, battle lines were drawn by people who tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to matters involving race. Reams of newsprint and many hours of air-time were expended on both praising and damning the work. 

As usual, when something like that happens, there was plenty of heat. But there was no light. 

And for good reason, too. How could there be? Would you expect anything useful to come out of a debate about whether or not the Emperor was wearing clothes? I don't think so. 

Why should it be any different here? It involves the same nonsense. 

Think about it.