GALTON, FRANCIS

GALTON, FRANCIS (1822–1911), English scientist and originator of the eugenics movement.

Francis Galton is best known for his origination of the eugenics movement, but he was also a versatile scientist who made diverse contributions to the fields of geography, meteorology, genetics, statistics, psychology, and criminology. Galton was born on 16 February 1822 into a wealthy family in Birmingham, England—his father a banker descended from the Quaker Barclay family (of banking fame) and his mother the daughter of the celebrated physician and poet Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) by his second wife. Galton was a half-cousin to Charles Darwin (1809–1882), whose father, Robert, was Erasmus Darwin's son by his first wife.

Although young Galton showed some signs of being a prodigy, his formal academic career was undistinguished; he started but did not complete medical training, and he failed to win honors in mathematics at Cambridge. After several years of idle drifting, he finally found purpose in active, outdoorsy pursuits and came to public prominence in the early 1850s as an African explorer. His map and geographical descriptions of present-day Namibia won him the Royal Geographical Society's Gold Medal for 1853, and his book Tropical South Africa (1853) provided a more popularized account and gained him a name as a travel writer. Galton subsequently became a central figure in the Royal Geographic Society and helped plan many of the epic African exploring expeditions of the 1860s and 1870s. In 1855 Galton wrote The Art of Travel, the first extensive "how-to" book for explorers and travelers in the wild. In the late 1850s Galton had the idea to plot simultaneous barometer readings from many different European locations on a single map—thus inventing the now ubiquitous weather map.

Galton's socially most momentous work was stimulated by Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory as introduced in 1859 in On the Origin of Species. Whereas Darwin at that point emphasized the evolution of physical characteristics in animals and plants, Galton was convinced that the most important intellectual and psychological variations in humans are also inheritable, and thus constitute the main basis of future human evolution. In an extrapolation that his cousin did not completely accept, Galton argued in Hereditary Genius (1869) and Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883) that human evolution could be deliberately facilitated by exercising selective breeding practices—a program that he first called "viriculture" and then, more effectively, "eugenics." This project became Galton's obsession and consuming passion for the rest of his long life.

In his efforts to place eugenics on a scientific footing, Galton originated several techniques and theories that continue to be actively used today in many different fields. One was the idea for the modern intelligence test, which Galton hoped would be a scientific measure of hereditary mental ability in young adults, so the most able could be identified and encouraged to intermarry and have many offspring. Galton's own tests measured neurophysiological functions, such as reaction time and sensory acuity, and met with little practical success. Nevertheless, his general eugenic idea remained alive and, following the development of a more effective testing approach by Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon in 1905, helped produce the continuing controversy regarding the hereditary or environmental determination of intelligence.

To measure the relative influences of "nature and nurture"—a catchphrase that Galton introduced in 1874—Galton had the idea of comparing similarities and differences between genetically identical, monozygotic twins, and nonidentical, dizygotic twins. His own, relatively simplistic study stimulated several more ambitious and sophisticated (although still somewhat inconclusive) investigations, including surveys of "separated" identical twins that continue to receive much fascinated attention. In an effort to express mathematically the relative strengths of hereditary relationships such as the similarities in height between fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, and other kinship pairs, Galton devised the basic techniques for calculating "coefficients of correlation"—a momentous statistical invention later perfected by Galton's disciple and biographer Karl Pearson (1857–1936). While searching for hereditary marks of personal individuality, Galton became interested in the subject of fingerprints and developed the first practical system of fingerprint classification according to "whorls," "loops," and "arches" that remains in general use. And at a time when most evolutionary biologists believed in the existence of at least a degree of "Lamarckian" inheritance, that is, of acquired characteristics, Galton denied that possibility in a speculative genetic theory that correctly anticipated much of the early twenty-first century's accepted wisdom about the mechanisms of inheritance.

Although he acknowledged a role for environmental influences and nurture, Galton was more interested in, and believed in the greater relative importance of, nature. His own work primarily stressed "positive" eugenics—the encouragement of a high rate of propagation by highly intelligent and able parents. Some others who followed him, however, emphasized the darker, negative side of eugenics—the discouragement or forced prevention of breeding by those deemed unfit or the products of degeneration. Thus the dark and unintended side of Galton's multifaceted legacy includes the involuntary sterilization of the retarded, restrictive immigration laws, and—at least indirectly—the enormities of Nazi genocide.

See alsoDegeneration; Eugenics; Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste; Science and Technology.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Galton, Francis. "Co-relations and Their Measurement." Proceedings of the Royal Society 45 (1888): 135–145. Famous paper introducing the method of statistical correlation.

——. Memories of My Life. London, 1908. Galton's vividly written autobiography.

Secondary Sources

Cowan, Ruth. S. "Nature and Nurture: The Interplay of Biology and Politics in the Work of Francis Galton." In Studies in the History of Biology, edited by W. Coleman and C. Limoges, vol. 1, 133–208. Baltimore, Md., 1977. A critical analysis of Galton's theories, arguing that they were strongly influenced by his conservative political inclinations.

Fancher, Raymond E. "The Measurement of Mind: Francis Galton and the Psychology of Individual Differences." In Pioneers of Psychology, by Raymond E. Fancher. 3rd ed., 216–245. New York, 1996. A summary of Galton's life and his influence on psychology.

Gillham, Nicholas Wright. A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. Oxford, U.K., 2001.

Pearson, Karl. The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton. 3 vols. Cambridge, U.K., 1914, 1924, 1930. A massive biography written from the standpoint of Galton's major disciple, but invaluable for its detail.

Raymond E. Fancher