A Life of Sir Francis Galton
From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics
416 pages, parution le 22/01/2002
Résumé
"Few scientists have made lasting contributions to as many
fields as Francis Galton. He was an important African
explorer, travel writer, and geographer. He was the
meteorologist who discovered the anticyclone, a pioneer in
using fingerprints to identify individuals, the inventor of
regression and correlation analysis in statistics, and the
founder of the eugenics movement. Now, Nicholas Gilham
paints an engaging portrait of this Victorian polymath."
The book traces Galton's ancestry (he was the grandson of
Erasmus Darwin and the cousin of Charles Darwin),
upbringing, training as a medical apprentice, and
experience as a Cambridge undergraduate. It recounts in
colorful detail Galton's adventures as leader of his own
expedition in Namibia. Darwin was always a strong influence
on his cousin and a turning point in Galton's life was the
publication of The Origin of Species. Thereafter, Galton
devoted most of his life to human heredity, using then
novel methods such as pedigree analysis and twin studies to
argue that talent and character were inherited and that
humans could be selectively bred to enhance these
qualities. To this end, he founded the eugenics movement,
which rapidly gained momentum early in the last century.
After Galton's death, however, eugenics took a more
sinister path, as in the United States, where by 1913
sixteen states had involuntary sterilization laws, and in
Germany, where the goal of racial purity was pushed to its
horrific limit in the "final solution." Galton himself,
Gillham writes, would have been appalled by the extremes to
which eugenics was carried.
Contents
- Preface.............................................................ix
- Prologue Francis Galton in Perspective..............................1
- 1 An Enviable Pedigree.........................................13
- 2 Metamorphosis From Birth to Medical School..................23
- 3 A Poll Degree from Cambridge.................................37
- 4 Drifting.....................................................47
- 5 South Africa.................................................61
- 6 Making Peace with Jonker Afrikaner...........................67
- 7 Expedition to Ovampoland.....................................79
- 8 Fame and Marriage............................................93
- 9 Riding High with the Royal Geographical Society I.
- The Great Lakes of Africa......................................109
- 10 Riding High with the Royal Geographical Society II.
- Stanley Faces Off with the Geographers.........................123
- 11 Weather Maps and the Anticyclone...........................140
- 12 Hereditary Talent and Character............................155
- 13 Gemmules, Rabbits, Germs, and Stirps.......................173
- 14 Nature and Nurture.........................................187
- 15 Sweet Peas and Anthropometrics.............................195
- 16 Probing the Mind...........................................215
- 17 Fingerprints...............................................231
- 18 The Birth ofBiometrics....................................250
- 19 Galton's Disciples.........................................269
- 20 Evolution by Jumps.........................................286
- 21 The Mendelians Trump the Biometricians.....................303
- 22 The Triumph of the Pedigree Eugenics......................324
- Epilogue Out of Pandora's Box: The First International
- Congress of Eugenics...............................................345
- Notes..............................................................359
- Bibliography.......................................................390
- Index..............................................................398
Caractéristiques techniques
| PAPIER | |
| Éditeur(s) | Oxford University Press |
| Auteur(s) | Nicholas Wright Gillham |
| Parution | 22/01/2002 |
| Nb. de pages | 416 |
| Format | 16 x 24,5 |
| Couverture | Relié |
| Poids | 900g |
| Intérieur | Noir et Blanc |
| EAN13 | 9780195143652 |
| ISBN13 | 978-0-19-514365-2 |
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