Eugenics and Francis Galton: Crash Course History of Science #23

Summary

This video script delves into the life and legacy of Francis Galton, a prominent Victorian polymath who contributed to various scientific fields, including statistics, psychology, and meteorology. However, Galton is most infamously known as the father of eugenics, a concept that sought to improve the human gene pool by encouraging the reproduction of people with 'desirable' traits. The script explores how Galton's ideas, influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, led to the development of eugenics, a movement that had severe and lasting social implications, particularly in the context of forced sterilization and discriminatory policies.

Takeaways

• 📚 Francis Galton was a pioneering scientist who co-founded several scientific disciplines, including meteorology, psychology, forensics, and statistics.
• 🌱 Galton is best known for founding the concept of eugenics, a controversial idea that aimed to improve the human gene pool by controlling reproduction.
• 🔬 Galton was influenced by his half-cousin, Charles Darwin, and focused on the social implications of Darwin's work, particularly in the context of heredity.
• 📈 Galton's work led to the creation of the field of behavioral genetics through his studies on twins and his development of statistical methods for studying inheritance.
• 💡 Galton introduced the concept of 'nature versus nurture,' popularizing the debate over whether genetics or environment plays a more significant role in human development.
• 📊 His experiments with sweet peas led to the discovery of the 'normal distribution' or bell curve, a fundamental concept in statistics.
• 👥 Galton's anthropometric studies involved measuring human bodies and traits, which contributed to the development of forensic fingerprinting.
• 🧠 Galton's ideas on eugenics influenced harmful policies, including forced sterilization laws and social Darwinism, which argued for the survival of the fittest in human society.
• 🚫 Despite being recognized as bad science by the late 1920s, eugenics continued to influence public policy, particularly in the United States and Nazi Germany.
• ⚖️ The legacy of Galton's work in comparing human differences quantitatively remains controversial, with lasting impacts on fields like IQ testing and social policy.

Q & A

Who is considered the father of eugenics and what was his connection to Charles Darwin?

Francis Galton is considered the father of eugenics. He was the half-cousin of Charles Darwin and was influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

What scientific disciplines did Francis Galton contribute to founding?

Francis Galton contributed to the founding of several scientific disciplines, including meteorology, psychology, forensics, and most notably, statistics.

What was the term coined by Francis Galton to describe the idea of improving the human gene pool?

The term coined by Francis Galton to describe the idea of improving the human gene pool is 'eugenics'.

What was the concept of 'social Darwinism' and how did it influence Francis Galton?

Social Darwinism was the idea that the concept of 'survival of the fittest' applied to human society, including class conflict. It influenced Francis Galton by leading him to believe that certain traits should be encouraged or discouraged in the population for the betterment of society.

What was the significance of Francis Galton's book 'Hereditary Genius'?

Hereditary Genius was significant because it was the first book to use the phrase 'nature versus nurture' and it popularized the practice of historiometry, which is the study of human traits by tracking ancestry information.

How did Francis Galton's work with twins contribute to the field of behavioral genetics?

Galton's work with twins proposed the idea of studying them as a 'natural experiment' to determine the influence of nature versus nurture on behavior. This laid the foundation for twin studies in behavioral genetics by the mid-1900s.

What statistical method did Francis Galton develop to research inheritance?

Francis Galton developed the quantitative science of human behavior through statistical methods, including the use of regression to the mean and the normal distribution, which he applied to model the distribution of traits over time.

What was the purpose of Francis Galton's 'Anthropometric Lab' at the International Health Exhibition in London?

The purpose of the Anthropometric Lab was to measure various aspects of visitors' bodies, minds, and senses. Galton used the data collected to further his research on human variation and to develop new instruments for measurement.

How did Francis Galton's work on eugenics influence policies and laws in the early 20th century?

Galton's work on eugenics influenced the passing of 'eugenical' laws in the United States and other countries, leading to policies such as compulsory sterilization of individuals deemed 'unfit', based on the belief that it would improve the gene pool of the human species.

What was the impact of eugenics on the development of IQ tests and intelligence measurement?

Eugenics influenced the development of IQ tests and intelligence measurement through the work of psychologists like Henry Goddard and Lewis Terman, who adapted French psychological work to create the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales and the IQ test for the US Army.

How did the legacy of Francis Galton's work on human difference and eugenics persist in the 20th century?

The legacy of Francis Galton's work persisted through the continued use of his quantitative methods for comparing humans, the influence of eugenics on policies and laws, and the development of tools like IQ tests that are still used today, despite the discrediting of eugenics as bad science.

Outlines

00:00

🔬 The Multifaceted Legacy of Francis Galton

Francis Galton, a polymath and co-founder of various scientific disciplines such as meteorology, psychology, and statistics, is most infamously remembered as the father of eugenics. His ideas were heavily influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Galton focused on heredity, particularly the concept of 'eminence,' which he studied by tracking the descendants of prominent British men. His work, 'Hereditary Genius,' introduced the idea of 'nature versus nurture,' laying the groundwork for future studies in behavioral genetics. Galton's use of statistics to model trait distribution, exemplified through his work with peas, helped establish the foundation for the science of human behavior.

05:03

📏 Anthropometry and the Controversy of Eugenics

In 1884, Francis Galton advanced his research on human variation by setting up an 'Anthropometric Lab' at the International Health Exhibition in London, where visitors paid to have their physical and mental traits measured. This practice, known as anthropometry, became widely adopted in various scientific disciplines. Galton also pioneered the use of fingerprinting in forensics. However, his work took a controversial turn with the publication of 'Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development,' where he coined the term 'eugenics' and advocated for 'positive eugenics'—encouraging the reproduction of families of merit. His ideas gained traction, leading to the First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912 and influencing policies like forced sterilization in the United States.

10:06

⚖️ The Dark Legacy of Eugenics

The eugenics movement, rooted in Galton's ideas, became intertwined with various social and political agendas in the early 20th century. Notable figures like Henry Goddard, Madison Grant, and Charles Davenport used eugenics to justify discriminatory practices and policies, such as forced sterilization and the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office. Even Margaret Sanger, known for her work in birth control, incorporated eugenic principles into her advocacy. Although eugenics was eventually discredited as bad science by most biologists, its influence persisted in laws and policies, with some practices, like compulsory sterilization, continuing in the U.S. until 2014. The legacy of quantifying human differences and the ethical dilemmas it presents remain relevant today.

Keywords

💡Polymath

A polymath is a person with a wide-ranging knowledge or learning across multiple fields. In the video, polymaths like Aristotle and Ibn Sina are contrasted with scientists who focused on a single discipline. This concept is central to understanding how figures like Francis Galton made contributions to various scientific areas, including statistics, psychology, and forensics.

💡Eugenics

Eugenics is a controversial and now discredited idea that the human gene pool can be improved through selective breeding. The video discusses how Francis Galton, influenced by his cousin Charles Darwin, became known as the 'father of eugenics.' His work led to harmful policies like forced sterilization, driven by the belief that certain traits were superior and should be propagated.

💡Natural Selection

Natural selection is a key concept in evolutionary biology proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, where organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce. In the video, the concept is linked to the idea of 'survival of the fittest,' which was misapplied to human society through Social Darwinism and later eugenics.

💡Hereditary Genius

Hereditary Genius is the title of a book by Francis Galton in which he argued that intellectual abilities are inherited and can be tracked across generations. The book introduced the phrase 'nature versus nurture,' and it marked the beginning of Galton's work in studying heredity and human traits, laying the groundwork for his eugenics theories.

💡Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is the application of Darwin's theories of natural selection to human societies, often used to justify class inequalities and discriminatory policies. In the video, Herbert Spencer and others misinterpreted Darwin's ideas to argue against laws protecting the weak, influencing thinkers like Francis Galton in the development of eugenics.

💡Anthropometry

Anthropometry is the scientific study of the measurements and proportions of the human body. The video explains how Francis Galton used this practice to gather data on human variation, contributing to his research on heredity and furthering his eugenics agenda. His work in anthropometry included innovations like fingerprinting for forensics.

💡Twin Studies

Twin studies are research methods used to understand the role of genetics (nature) versus environment (nurture) in shaping human behavior. In the video, Francis Galton is credited with proposing twins as a 'natural experiment' to study heredity, although he didn't conduct such studies himself. This concept became foundational in behavioral genetics.

💡Bell Curve

The bell curve, also known as the normal distribution, is a statistical concept that describes how traits in a population tend to distribute around a mean value. Francis Galton's work with pea plants led him to observe that human traits also follow this pattern. This idea became central to his development of statistical methods to study human behavior.

💡Positive Eugenics

Positive eugenics refers to the encouragement of reproduction among people with 'desirable' traits, as proposed by Francis Galton. The video details how Galton argued for the promotion of 'families of merit,' suggesting that society should incentivize the reproduction of people with favorable traits to improve the human gene pool.

💡IQ Tests

IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests are standardized tests designed to measure human intelligence. The video highlights how early proponents of eugenics, influenced by Francis Galton's work, developed these tests to quantify intelligence. However, these tests were often biased and used to justify discriminatory practices, such as in the U.S. Army during World War I.

Highlights

Francis Galton was a co-founder of several scientific disciplines including meteorology, psychology, forensics, and statistics.

Galton made the first weather map, marking a significant advancement in meteorology.

He is also remembered as the father of eugenics, a concept that aimed to improve the human gene pool by selective breeding.

Galton's ideas on eugenics were partly inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

Herbert Spencer's concept of 'survival of the fittest' influenced Galton and was applied to social Darwinism.

Galton's work focused on the social implications of Darwin's theory, emphasizing the importance of biological traits over environmental factors.

His book 'Hereditary Genius' introduced the concept of 'nature versus nurture' and the practice of historiometry.

Galton proposed studying twins as a natural experiment to understand the impact of heredity versus environment on human behavior.

He developed statistical methods to research inheritance, laying the foundation for the quantitative science of human behavior.

Galton's work with sweet peas led to the understanding of traits distribution in a 'normal' distribution or bell curve.

At the International Health Exhibition, Galton's Anthropometric Lab introduced new instruments for measuring human variation.

Galton pioneered the use of fingerprinting in forensics, classifying features still used today.

Galton's eugenics concept led to the idea of 'positive eugenics', encouraging 'families of merit' to grow.

The First International Congress of Eugenics was held in 1912, promoting eugenical laws, particularly in the United States.

Eugenics influenced policies such as compulsory sterilization, which continued in some states until the 20th century.

Galton's legacy, the quantitative comparison of humans, has had a lasting impact, despite eugenics being recognized as bad science.

Eugenics was used to justify discriminatory practices, such as inaptitude tests in the US Army, favoring certain racial backgrounds.

The concept of eugenics was adopted by influential figures like Madison Grant and Charles Davenport, promoting racial superiority and 'suitable' marriages.

Margaret Sanger, known for birth control advocacy, also supported eugenics, believing it would legitimize her movement.

Despite being challenged, the Buck v. Bell case upheld compulsory sterilization, a decision that has never been technically overturned.

Transcripts

Most famous scientists picked a thing.

But a few polymaths, like Aristotle and Ibn Sina, picked everything.

Francis Galton, one of the most important thinkers in the generation after Darwin, fell

into column B.

Hardcore.

Galton was a co-founder of a range of scientific disciplines, including meteorology, psychology,

forensics, and above all statistics.

He was an active member of the influential British Association for the Advancement of

Science.

He made the first weather map.

Mostly, though, he is remembered for something that we don’t even count as science today:

Galton was the father of eugenics, the idea that the gene pool of the human species could

somehow be improved, if certain people with different abilities didn’t have kids.

Where did Galton come up with such a terrible idea?

Partly, from the work of his half-cousin.

Charles Darwin.

[INTRO MUSIC PLAYS]

When Darwin and Wallace proposed their theory

of evolution by natural selection, it was based on observing differences produced by

thousands of years of gradual changes.

But we, as short-lived humans, can’t observe thousands of years of evolutionary change

first-hand.

So it was hard to know what to do with natural selection.

In the late 1800s, no one really understood how heredity worked.

But many biologists, most notably Herbert Spencer, argued that “survival of the fittest”

applied to humans, just like other species.

So they figured there must be a technical way to use that knowledge…

Spencer, for example, argued against all laws that limited class conflict, which he saw

as tests of fitness—including basic child labor laws.

Spencer’s idea, called social Darwinism, influenced a lot of people in the late 1800s.

And one of them was Darwin’s younger cousin, Francis Galton.

Born in 1822 to a prominent Quaker family, Galton was a child prodigy.

Like Darwin, Galton was largely self-taught—a “gentleman of science.”

Also, like Darwin, he never did well in school, suffered from nervous breakdowns, and traveled

widely.

Unlike Darwin, Galton was not a shy scholar.

He was obsessed with the idea of genius—whether it was a product of good hereditary luck or learning.

For Galton, as for most Victorians, nature

held all of the cards.

He got this idea from his cousin’s hit book.

On the Origin of Species blew Galton’s mind.

After 1859, Galton focused on the social implications of Darwin’s work.

He argued that an organism’s most important characteristics must be biological, rather

than shaped by the environment or experience.

And, like Darwin, he sought evidence for his theory.

The first step was to pick some trait to track over time.

He selected “eminence,” which today you might think of as basically awesomeness.

Galton thought that, if human traits can be inherited, then tracking the descendants of

obviously eminent men—and of course they were men—should show a decreasing level

of eminence over time, as intermarriage with non-eminent people diluted this trait.

So he gathered all of the historical evidence he could on eminent British men and their

descendants, and indeed found that eminence seemed to decrease over time.

The resulting book, Hereditary Genius, published in 1869, contains the first use of the phrase

“nature versus nurture.”

The book also, by the way, includes a chapter on eminent “Wrestlers of the North Country.”

!!! Hereditary Genius popularized the practice

of historiometry, or studying human traits by tracking ancestry information.

But Galton knew that he was barely scratching the surface of heredity.

He needed more evidence.

So he did what his cousin would have done: he turned to a model from nature.

This time, twins and peas instead of pigeons and barnacles.

In 1875, in the paper, “The history of twins,” he proposed studying twins, which he saw as

a natural experiment.

By the mid 1900s, twin studies became the foundation of behavioral genetics, or how

heredity affects behavior.

Galton realized that twins presented a “natural experiment”: if nature is more powerful

than nurture, then twins should be more similar than not, even if they’re raised apart.

But if nurture is more powerful, then twins should behave differently when raised apart.

Galton didn’t conduct his own twin studies, but he outlined what future research should look like.

Galton also developed statistical methods to research inheritance, and in doing so,

he created the quantitative science of human behavior.

ThoughtBubble, show us how:

Galton also started breeding sweet peas, comparing the sizes of the offspring of different seeds.

Galton’s work with peas led him to conclude that traits tend toward a statistical average.

Galton couldn’t figure out why, but he could use statistics to model the general

pattern of how traits were distributed over time—in this case, in a “normal” distribution,

a bell curve.

In 1884, Galton took his pea model to the International Health Exhibition in London.

Visitors to his “Anthropometric Lab” paid to have Galton measure their bodies, minds,

and senses in various ways.

He produced many new instruments in order to measure, for example, eyesight.

Visitors received the results, and Galton also kept a copy to add to his library of

research on variation in humans.

This practice, known as anthropometry—or literally, measuring humans—became common

across many disciplines.

Galton also pioneered the use of fingerprinting in forensics.

He classified the features that we still look for: loops, whorls, and arches.

Thanks ThoughtBubble. So Galton built on Darwin’s work to invent

a statistical science of life.

But now it gets weird.

And, frankly, difficult.

Because Galton decided that, based on his investigations of inheritance, good traits

such as genius and morality were diluted down to some norm over time.

In 1883, one year after Cousin Chuck passed away, Galton published Inquiries into Human

Faculty and Its Development, in which he coined the term “eugenics”—the discipline of

“good breeding,” or literally making “good families,” in humans.

Galton was not the first to suggest that smart people should have kids with each other, or

that cousins should avoid marrying.

What Galton did was argue—based on what he saw as scientific evidence—for the public

to do something about these ideas.

He wanted “families of merit” to grow, and he thought the government should incentivize

this growth.

This was called “positive eugenics.”

Galton pointed out that many well-born Victorians married late and had few kids, compared to

the lower classes.

If this fear of the weakening of supposedly “good stock” by new, poor, or different

people sounds familiar, that’s partly because Galton’s so-called “science” of eugenics

quickly gained traction.

The First International Congress of Eugenics was held in 1912, the year after Galton died.

And it was around this time that nations began passing “eugenical” laws.

Particularly the United States.

Driven by a fear that births of supposedly inferior people would lead to weak or criminally

“degenerate” adults, some states introduced forcible sterilization laws starting in 1907.

These were mostly used to justify the sterilization of already incarcerated groups and those with

different abilities.

This was “negative eugenics,” which was not something Galton had explicitly argued for.

The metaphor used by eugenicists was drawn from Darwin, but modified: a family or nation

was a tree, and its branches sometimes needed “pruning.”

A famous example of this thinking in the United States was psychologist Henry Goddard’s

1912 book about a family from New Jersey called the “Kallikaks.”

This was a made-up name for a real family whose genealogy Goddard studied to understand

what he called “feeblemindedness,” or intellectual disability.

In the book, Goddard compared the branch of the Kallikak family that was descended from

its founding father’s legitimate marriage, and the branch descended from that founder’s

affair with a “nameless feeble-minded girl.”

Goddard concluded that feeblemindedness was strongly heritable and a danger to democracy.

Although he later admitted this was a flawed study, it was a hit, and his terms for different

levels of intelligence became common: “moron,” “imbecile,” “idiot.”

Goddard’s attempts to quantify intelligence weren’t at the fringes of science.

His ideas are creepily still with us in the form of intelligence quotient or IQ tests.

Goddard, who was a big-time fan of Galtonian eugenics, translated the work of three major

French psychologists in 1910.

This translation was picked up by Lewis Terman at Stanford University, who adapted the work

of the French to create the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales in 1916.

Goddard and Terman then worked with Robert Yerkes to develop an IQ test

for the US Army in 1917.

The US Army introduced aptitude tests to place soldiers in different roles.

But the tests were highly discriminatory, privileging white candidates from educated

backgrounds.

The trial of the test showed very low results for non-Northern European whites and non-whites.

Goddard spent much of the rest of his life publicizing these results—even though they

were contested in his own day as shoddy science.

There were sooo many other serious, Galton-inspired scientists who did creepy research on human

difference and argued for terrible policies, we could do a whole creepy spin-off show.

Instead, let’s just talk about some of the worst.

A lawyer and zoologist named Madison Grant wrote a book called The Passing of the Great

Race in 1916, citing Galton.

Grant subdivided Caucasians into three types, claiming that the great “Nordics” were

being rapidly outbred in the United States by inferior types of whites.

Meanwhile, Charles Davenport, a very influential zoologist, founded the Eugenics Record Office

at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1910.

He collected data to help people check whether a potential marriage was suitable.

And, maybe unsurprisingly,

Davenport was a fan of the Nazis.

But probably the eugenicist most well known to us today was the nurse who coined the term

“birth control” and opened the first US birth control clinic in 1916: Margaret Sanger.

Sanger founded the American Birth Control League to educate people about safe abortion

procedures and contraceptives.

She gave lectures on birth control to many groups, including the KKK in 1926.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, Sanger thought that eugenics would give her movement legitimacy.

Eugenics became a dominant theme at her birth control conferences, and she spoke publicly

of the need to put an end to breeding by the unfit.

By the late 1920s, eugenics had been recognized as bad science by most practicing biologists.

But as a source of policy for many lawmakers in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere,

eugenics was still very much alive.

In the 1800s, science had become much more important for states.

They wanted to understand their populations… and, now, shape them.

Compulsory sterilization was challenged in the US Supreme Court in 1927 in the famous

Buck v. Bell case.

But the decision, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., sided with the eugenicists

and has never technically been overturned.

In fact, forced sterilization was still happening in California prisons until it was banned

in 2014.

Did Galton think that studying human difference would lead to bad science and even worse laws?

Not necessarily.

But in some ways, his legacy -- a legacy of comparing humans quantitatively -- is still

with us.

Next time—we’ll see what’s going on in a less creepy area of the life sciences:

it’s time for Pasteur, Koch, and the birth of microbiology!

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