Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences
Francis Galton · 1869
Read Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences by Francis Galton (1869) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/galton-hereditary-genius-1869.txt.
Description
Francis Galton published Hereditary Genius in 1869, his first book on inherited ability. He collected the family histories of judges, statesmen, scientists, and other eminent men. Patterns in those pedigrees drive his whole argument.
Galton claims that talent clusters in families because nature outweighs training. He ranks relatives by closeness and counts how eminence fades with distance. The inquiry launched the nature-versus-nurture debate in modern form. It also launched eugenics, whose harms readers must keep in view. The statistical ambition was real; so were the blind spots. Galton later expanded its methods into the statistical study of human differences generally.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Francis Galton |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 1869 |
| COLLECTION | BOOKS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 756 KB |
| LICENSE | Public Domain |
| RIGHTS | PUBLIC DOMAIN |
| SOURCE | galton.org |
Source: https://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/text/v5/galton-1869-hereditary-genius-v5.htm