Jaga,
I believe the times are changing. In Europe and probably also in the USA girls are smarter at school than boys. And more and more girls and young women are interested in Exact sciences (Beta subjects), where in the past women were seen as people who were primarily interested typical Alpha subjects (Geisteswissenschaften; the alpha side of Human sciences) and Gamma sciences; languages, culture (art, art history, art curator, literature and poetry), Rechtswissenschaft oder Jurisprudenz (Nauki prawne; I don't know the English word for this; maybe law/Jurisprudence) human sciences such as philosophy, Political science, history, sociology, psychology, theology, anthropology, philology, musicology, linguistics, theater studies, literary studies, media studies, economics, journalism (press/Media) genetics, evolutionary biology, neurosciences and Communication studies (nonverbal communication involving observing a person and inferring meaning). Under Communication studies I understand Marketing-Communication, Prublic relations, advertisement, relationship building in the sense of networking and etc.
I have great respect for you Jaga as a Beta woman in a world which is dominated by Male Beta brains. I have to admit that when I think about Beta scientists; Physicians, Chemists, Biochemists, Physical chemists, Geochemists, Computational chemists, Mathematicians, Biologists, Biophysicists, Astronomists, theoretical physicists (Quantum mechanics), Nuclear physicians, and even Geneticists I think about mature white males in their fifties or sixties. Ofcourse you had well known female Geneticists, Biologists, Physicians, Chemists and Mathematicians, but they were never dominant or know to the larger audience.
When people think about scientists or academic kind of university professor or academic researchers of Research & Development centers in Europe and Northern-America we always have images of older white males, with grey hair, intellectual old fashionate Black Glasses (spectacles) with Germanic (German, Austrian, English or Scandinavian) or Slavic (Polish-, Russian-, Czech-, Slovak-, Bulgarian-, Belarussian, Ukrainian-, Sorb-, Ruthenian-, Serb-, Slovenian-, Croat-, Bosnian-, or Montenegrin-, or Macedonian) surnames. And now I will make a philosemetic and maybe Pro-Germanic sounding remark, which is not my intention, but is the feeling I have with exact sciences and Nobel prizes. In my opinion these Nobel prizes often went to Jews, Germans, and Austrians. I will explain; a lot of Jewish scientists, due to the fact that they lived in the Germanic and Slavic world carried and carry Germanic and Slavic surnames and given names.
To name a few Albert Einstein, Tadeusz Reichstein (a Polish-Swiss chemist), Hans Adolf Krebs, Otto Heinrich Warburg, Paul Ehrlich, Julius Axelrod, Karl Landsteiner, Adolf von Baeyer, Joseph Erlanger, Richard Willstätter, Fritz Haber, the Hungarian George Charles de Hevesy, Roald Hoffmann (born Roald Safran), Sidney Altman (parents from Poland and Ukraine), Arthur Kornberg and his son Roger D. Kornberg, Robert Lefkowitz (Polish ancesters), Joseph L. Goldstein (American biochemist), the American biochemist Robert F. Furchgott, Felix Bloch, Robert Hofstadter (the son of Polish immigrants to the USA), Julian Schwinger (the son of Polish immigrants to the USA), Steven Weinberg, Jack Steinberger (born in Germany), Zhores Ivanovich Alferov (Russian), John Michael Kosterlitz, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Leonid Vitaliyevich Kantorovich, John Harsanyi (Hungarian), Leonid Hurwicz (a Polish American economist and mathematician), and many other excellent Ashkenazi Jewish scientists, academics, economists, theorists, writers, poets and analysts. Personaly I believe that their intelligence comes from thousands of years of Torah, Talmud, Midrash (rabbinic literature, Aggadah), Halakha (Jewish religious law), secular (non-Jewish) law, Jewish-, Greek-, Roman-, Christian- and Islamic- philosophy (which was studied by Jewish philosophers and academics) and the fact that European jews were very active in the European economies, trade (commerce), scientific world, academic world and cultural world.
An example is Talmudical hermeneutics (Hebrew: מידות שהתורה נדרשת בהן) which defines the rules and methods for the investigation and exact determination of the meaning of the Scriptures, within the framework of Rabbinic Judaism. This includes, among others, the rules by which the requirements of the Oral Law and the Halakha are derived from and established by the written law.
These rules relate to:
- grammar and exegesis
- the interpretation of certain words and letters and apparently superfluous and/or missing words or letters, and prefixes and suffixes
- the interpretation of those letters which, in certain words, are provided with points
- the interpretation of the letters in a word according to their numerical value (see Gematria)
- the interpretation of a word by dividing it into two or more words (see Notarikon)
- the interpretation of a word according to its consonantal form or according to its vocalization
- the interpretation of a word by transposing its letters or by changing its vowels
- the logical deduction of a halakhah from a Scriptural text or from another law
In nearly 4,000 years of historical development, the Jewish people and their religion have displayed a remarkable adaptability and continuity. In their encounter with the great civilizations, from ancient Babylonia and Egypt to Western Christendom and modern secular culture, they have assimilated foreign elements and integrated them into their own social and religious systems, thus maintaining an unbroken religious and cultural tradition.
The most obvious observational basis for postulating and inferring that Ashkenazi Jews have higher intelligence than other ethnic groups is their disproportionate prevalence in intellectually demanding fields and domains such as chess playing, mathematics, science and technology, politics and law relative to their small population.
Ashkenazi Jewish achievements is not only limited to intellectual pursuits, but also endeavors where having a higher intelligence is an advantage such as business and commerce. According to the 1931 census of Poland, Jews comprised 9.8 percent of the Polish population but controlled 22.4 percent of the wealth in the country. Despite their small population, Ashkenazi Jews in Poland also owned 55 percent of large and medium-sized commercial businesses in 1938 and dominated the textile, chemical, food, transportation, paper manufacturing, and building material industries.
Today Ashkenazim constitute more than 80 percent of all the Jews in the world, vastly outnumbering Sephardic Jews. In the early 21st century, Ashkenazic Jews numbered about 11 million.
Sometimes minorities are smarter than majorities, because they have to survived in a hostile (Christian-, secular- or atheist) environment. I want to state that ofcourse the Sephardic and Mizrachi (Middle-Eastern Arab-, Berber-, Turkish-, Kurd-, Persian- [Iranian]) jews also had their survival skills and intelligence. So I tried to give a historical, sociological and human explanation for the Jewish succes in the European, North-American, Australian, New Zealandish, South-African (English and Afrikaans speaking South-African jews), Latin- and Southern-American and Israeli world. It's like the succes of Polish slavic people in predominantly Germanic countries like Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Great-Britian (United Kingdom) and the 10 million Polish Americans in the USA. I hope that I won't be labeled anti-semitic by mentioning this thesis about Jews with Germanic and Slavic names and the Nobel prize. This is what I see, experienced and examined.
Back to the subject of Jaga. I have great admiration for you
Jaga and your Polish parents in Kraków, who belonged to the Kraków Academic university world. Your parents house in Kraków was always open to pheople from all over the world thanks to your parents. Since your childhood you were encouraged to understand people from different cultures and to learn foreign languages. In different parts of your life you gained a proficiency in Russian, German, English, and you know also some French and Spanish. Besides working in Physics, you have also worked on weekends as a tour guide and travel guide and you were a teacher at various schools in Idaho.
Jaga, you moved to Texas to earn a Ph.D. in Physics from Texas Christian University. I hope you will find a firm position in your field of expertise, talent, capacities, experience and training. You are an academic and scientist in heart and soul. That is where your passion, professional eager and desire lies. You can be an example for your daughter Ela and maybe girlfriends of her and girls from the neighborhood and young female familymembers (maybe from Poland and maybe from the USA). Your life in the USA is different than in Poland, but your experience and professional experience have both European and American roots. (Your Texas Christian University education and your scientific work in the USA).
Jaga, you must recognise a great deal in the physics, chemistry and other exact sciences Nobel prize winners, because you are part of their world of Beta sciences. In my view it is important that more women win the nobel prize not from a affirmative action (positive discrimination) position, but from the better conditions of, for and by girls and women in the world. Feminists and non-feminists strive for better education for girls and women and a larger participation of women in the societies, cultures and economies of various countries and nations. In Saoudi Arabia you see that women are allowed to drive a car today, not due to emancipatory reasons, but due to practical, financial and economical reasons. The Saoudi's know that the Saoudi economy will benefit from Saoudi women who drive cars. In the Scientific and academical sense, this will lead to a revolution, because young Saoudi women and girls will be able to drive to highschools, universities, Research & Development centers, places of Adult education and international meetings, gatherings, workshops, seminars, trainings and courses in Saoudi Arabia. Also in Africa, Asia and Latin America hopefully the situation of women and girls will change due to better education. Unicef, UN Women, people like
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, *
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and
Queen Maxima of
the Netherlands fight for girl and women rights for education and self empowerment. Maxima was a member of the Committee for Ethnic Minority Women’s Participation from July 2003 until 2005. In her work as UNSGSA, the Queen focuses on how formal financial services such as savings, insurance, and credit can prevent people from falling into poverty due to expenditures on healthcare, and people who are not able to protect themselves against rising food prices and poverty because they do not have access to basic savings accounts.
In her role as queen Maxima has access to the powerful women of the world
Cheers,
Pieter
*
Ayaan Hirsi Ali faces criticism and rejection by Muslim, secular leftist and some rightwing individuals and groups. (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali#Early_life_in_the_Netherlands )
Source: English, Dutch language and German language Wikipedia pages, Encyclopedia Britannica and my own experience in the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, South-Africa and with international Media (New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, DW, Vice News, RT, Fox news, CNN, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek -in the past-, the New Republic, the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedie -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkler_Prins ), Encyclopaedia Judaica and my mothers Polish encyclopedia (see searched a lot of subjects in that thick book and translated it for me in Dutch. So the Polish encyclopedia is a Oral source for me. Because I have only acces to it via my mother. I did and do that to have a Polish alternative for the Dutch, Wikipedia, Britannica and Judaica encyclopedia). Other sources are the Dutch newspapers NRC Handelsblad, de Volkskrant, Trouw, de Gelderlander (my regional, provincial newspaper, which I read every day from monday until saturday -the weekend edition-) and magazines Vrij Nederland, Groene Amsterdammer, HP de Tijd, Elsevier and NIW. Sometimes I buy the New York Times and Foreign Affairs in the Arnhem train station.
