Francis Galton Quotes
I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.
There were some people at the time who believed that by means of effort and following moral precepts there would be an equality of achievement. There were also many who began to observe that much of the differences between individuals were are result of environment—opportunity for education, socialization and other factors. Science is still trying to determine the relative causal contributions to individual differences of genetics and environment.
Francis Galton, 1822-1911, English Scientist & Mathematician, Hereditary Genius, 1869
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This quotation is important for two reasons. First, it appears to be the first use of the nature-nurture words to discuss this concept. Second, this “conclusion” started one of the longest running scientific debates in biology—nurture vs nature.
She was one of Francis Galton’s collaborators in his laboratory. This particular quotation if true challenges some of the basic aspects of democracy itself. However, it was a large part of the basis for the Eugenics movement, and is still argued by some today.
There were a substantial proportion of Americans who believed that mulattoes were per se inferior.
Mill was one of the early thinkers to realize that gender discrimination was not only unfair to women, but was a barrier to progress for the whole society including the men.
This is but one of the quotations of someone who was a major force in perpetuating the old slavery era myth that “Negros” were not only inferior to whites, but they were unable to develop morality or repress their sexual urges. Dr. Howard was generally castigated by his professional colleagues, but he was quite popular with the general public for whom he wrote a number of books and magazine articles.
At the time, many scientists and intellectuals thought erroneously—see related quotations—that hybrids would be inferior humans. What makes this quotation memorable is that although he acknowledged that empirically, mixed race people (human hybrids) were inferior, of offered an explanation that did not violate sound genetic science as most others did. He concluded that sociologically whites and black who would intermarry or interbreed would generally not come from the top echelons of either race. Therefore the lower half of each race would more likely produce offspring and provide them with an environment that was not optimum so genetics and nurture worked against the mulatto. At the time that may well have been so, and perhaps until recently it was so forth the majority of crossbreeds of many societies.
He was writing about America and many of the industrial democracies who at the time, as a result of globalziation, technology, government action and inaction, and other factors, had gone through a 30 year period of increasing disparities.
Sir Francis Galton, FRS, was an English Victorian era polymath: a statistician, sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician and a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics and scientific racism. He was knighted in 1909.
