An article in the magazine New Humanist offers a lovely example of the ability to discover support for what one already believes amid a mountain of overwhelmingly contrary evidence.Writer Sally Feldman says, in relation to Daniel Johnson’s discussion of the extraordinary prominence of Jews among the highest levels of chess grandmasters (in White King and Red Queen: A History of Chess During the Cold War):
Most commentators, though, deny that an aptitude for chess is inherent or genetic. There are plenty of examples of the teachability of brilliance – not least the massive Soviet investment in training which between the ’40s and ’60s created a pool of millions and produced literally hundreds of grandmasters. And then there is the phenomenon of pushy parents who have driven their children to become über-champions. Susan Polgar, the first female chess grandmaster, was schooled from the age of four by her Hungarian father, a psychologist who used his daughters as an experiment to show how genius could be induced. Susan, who has played with all the major grandmasters, is able to conduct five games at once – without a board. Her two sisters appear to be equally skilled.
So if such abilities can be acquired through training, what can account for the consistent superiority of the Jews? One explanation might be that chess is a remarkably adaptable, portable game, and therefore well suited to the dispossessed, the exile, the refugee, the prisoner.
This is not evidence for the teachability of brilliance; it’s more like the opposite. Training millions of obedient Soviet children in chess produced “literally hundreds of grandmasters.” Oh. And millions of mediocre players who would never win a single game against a grandmaster.
Training may be necessary, but it is not sufficient.
The Polgar sisters are a counterexample of a different sort. Yes, their father seems to have made them into exceptional chess players from a very early age, but we’ve heard of him only because he succeeded. Who knows how many millions of other equally determined fathers tried and failed?
Also, they were after all his children, and quite likely shared in his abilities. If he’d accomplished the same feat with the three little daughters of the grocery clerk in the apartment next door, that would be interesting.
The pianist Ruth Slenczynska was the victim of just such a brutal scheme to make her a child prodigy. We know about it only because her father succeeded with her. But in her autobiography, Forbidden Childhood (which I read many years ago) I recall she wrote that he tried the same regimen with a younger sister, and had to give up because the child simply would not comply.
Commentators do, generally, prefer to deny that aptitudes (of all kinds, not just for chess) might be inherent, let alone that they might be genetic. But they have to overlook the plain facts in order to indulge their preferences.