Makes me wonder what the Clans could do if they'd apply stricter breeding to non-Warrior castes. Super-scientists?
Intelligence, especially as applied to a complex human construct like a profession, is a much trickier thing and way harder to measure and predict.
Raw characteristics like height and muscle mass are very straightforward to measure and predict. If you want tall and muscular specimens, it’s easy to identify the tall and muscular forbears that are mostly likely to produce such specimens.
Somewhat harder to measure and more complex to predict are performed athletic characteristics, like running speed, endurance, or reflexes. But selective breeding still works here. We breed greyhounds to run fast, sled dogs to run long, terriers to hunt rodents in tunnels, collies to herd livestock, etc.
The corollary in the human realm might be professional sports. And not surprisingly, parents in professional sports often have children that also make their way into the same professional sport. Just look at this list of second-generation NBA players, for example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_second-generation_National_Basketball_Association_playersSome of that is no doubt due to these NBA dads passing on their knowledge and skills to their sons. But a lot or maybe most of it is also due to these NBA dads passing along their athletic gifts genetically.
We also have measures of intelligence, like IQ tests and SATs. But as any critic of those tests will tell you, they are not predictive of success in school or professional life. They measure potential, but not aptitude, which involves a lot of other, even more slippery things, like interest in a subject, willpower to put in the time necessary to master a subject, ability to work with others, etc. Put another way, just because you have Einstein’s IQ, doesn’t mean that you have what it takes to revolutionize our understanding of physics.
And I think we see that this limitation regarding selective breeding for complex intelligent behaviors still applies to the Clans. Some simple nervous system characteristics — like mechwarrior reflexes or pilot sight — are bred into trueborns. But complex products of intelligence — tactical awareness, strategic genius, etc. — are not. Even among Clan trueborns, an Ulric Kerensky is just as rare as a Hanse Davion is among Spheroid freeborns.
If the Clans could measure, predict, and breed hundreds of Ulric Kerenskies, they would. But they don’t, which implies they can’t, which probably also means that they couldn’t measure, predict, and breed hundreds of Einsteins, Darwins, and Newtons either, even if they wanted to.
We now know that the best indicators of success in college and life are grades in school, not SATs and IQ tests. The equivalent for Clan sibkin would be simulations and unit exercises. Your next Galaxy Commanders and Star Colonels will probably be found among the sibkin who perform the best on the simulators or lead the best in unit exercises, not necessarily among the bloodlines of the prior Galaxy Commanders and Star Colonels.
And I think that’s why the Clan training regimens and codexes are as important in the BT canon as the breeding programs. Whether a military commander or research scientist, human behavior involving complex brain functions is just not as genetically determined as physical performance.
My 2 Kerenskies... FWIW.
