Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present

✍ Scribed by Diane B. Paul

• Publisher: Humanities Press
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 86
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Diane B. Paul's brief overview of the history of eugenics is aimed at students and the general public rather than specialists. Therefore Paul does not provide a new interpretation of the history of eugenics, but she does an admirable job of explaining the issues in short compass.

Paul's interpretations are generally sound. Her nuanced presentation of Darwin's social views is persuasive, though she misrepresents him as a "convinced materialist" (pp. 25, 27, 33). Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, embraced Darwinism and founded eugenics as the study and promotion of measures to improve human heredity. Galton's ideas did not gain wide acceptance at first, since prevailing opinion held that the effects of nurture and the environment were decisive in shaping humanity. The growing acceptance of Weismann's neo-Darwinism and Mendelian genetics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century would tilt things in favor of nature over nurture.