The History of Francis Galton: Heredity and Eugenics

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The History of Francis Galton: Heredity and Eugenics Much of the history surrounding Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) focuses on heredity and eugenics but Galton was also an English polymath in the Victorian era; Galton studied geography, tropical exploration, anthropology, psychometrics, meteorology, eugenics, and statistics. As a young child, he was always intellectually at the forefront compared to the average person his age. He was a pioneer in many areas of psychology, producing many papers and books on the topic of heredity and eugenics. Galton perused numerous fields of study, which helped him integrate his ideas and gain a broader view on the human condition. Galton influenced his successors and was influenced by many of his predecessors, namely his half-cousin, Charles Darwin and Darwin’s work entitled The Origin of Species. Galton drew from what others had established and extended those findings. He desired to improve the human race with his findings in eugenics but lacked some crucial pieces to the puzzle he developed. He asked all the “right” questions but drew the wrong conclusions. Although the modern day public may dismiss some of his ideas as backward or non-progressive, Galton was a genius among men; Galton published many works that introduced the scientific world to never-before conceived ideas and concepts. Francis Galton traveled extensively and studied many other fields including geography and meteorology before moving onto the study of heredity and the new field of “eugenics” (Gillham, 2011). This shift was due to Charles Darwin’s extremely influential arguments in The Origin of Species, which had one section on variations in human populations that provided a spark of proof to Galton that the human race could be advanced by means of selective breeding. Darwin heavily influenced many including Galton, largely due to the impact of

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