ABSTRACT
This chapter is a case study of Arthur R. Jensen was born in 1923 in San Diego, California. Jensen's interests in herpetology and classical music provide clues to the eventual rise of Jensenism. He clearly had an interest in biology Catching and keeping snakes and lizards required carefully observing their behavior. Jensen remains passionate about music, though he hasn't performed in years. He has a massive collection of recordings and he and his wife are season ticket holders for the San Francisco Opera. Perhaps because of his personal experience with music, Jensen has been keenly aware of his own and others people's limitations, and he is therefore skeptical of pie-in-the-sky claims that "If you can dream it, you can be it! Instead, he has always practiced and preached a methodical approach of setting stepwise goals and reevaluating the next step to take as each successive rung is reached or not.
