The Institute’s twenty-eighth annual symposium was held on 19 and 20 September 1991. The twelve papers will be published in full as a single volume in association with Macmillan Press.
Despite the monumental biography written by his protégé Karl Pearson, Francis Galton as a human being remains elusive. He initially embarked upon medical studies but the death of his father brought an inheritance large enough to support him for life. Like his cousin Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, Galton decided to travel but his own expeditions to Egypt and South West Africa were tame in comparison with the adventures of many of his contemporaries. In 1853 he married and settled to domestic and social routine. The publication of Darwin’s ‘‘Origin of Species’’ totally transformed his intellectual life, giving him a sense of evolutionary process without which much of his later work would have been unimaginable. Galton became a ‘‘religious agnostic’’, recognising the social value of religion but not its transcendental basis. He remained childless but left no clue as to how, given his eugenic views, this circumstance affected him. He died in 1911, the last of the great Victorian polymaths.
Mrs Dorothy Middleton, daughter of Galton’s nephew, described his foreign excursions. His major expedition was to South West Africa in 1850-52. He would have followed in Livingstone’s footsteps but when he landed at the Cape his way was barred by conflict between the Boers and the local Bantu so instead he sailed up the South West coast of Africa and explored Damara Land, now known as Namibia. His explorations were not a major contribution to the study of Africa, nor did they much influence his great scientific thoughts. Nevertheless, on his return in 1852 he was received with acclaim by the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded its Founder’s Medal. He produced a booklet of ‘‘Hints for Travellers’’ which was revised and reprinted for over 100 years and another called the ‘‘Art of Travel: Shifts and Contrivances in Wild Countries’’ incorporating advice gleaned from travellers all over the world. His contributions to these works included information on how to construct a sundial and to estimate the speed of a charging animal, advice on medical precautions and the design of tents and somewhat chauvinistic views on the rôle of women. Galton’s most effective contributions to geography were an enthusiasm for mapping - including a map showing the variation of beauty across the UK - and in the study of meteorology, inventing the term ‘‘anticyclone’’.
Professor Edwards began by outlining Galton’s ancestry and relationship with eminent men such as Charles Darwin and their common grandfather Erasmus Darwin, demonstrating the family influences - both genetic and environmental - on his development. Although Galton had no children, his support for Karl Pearson engendered greater respect than any genuine father-son relationship. Turning to numeracy, Professor Edwards explained that by ‘‘innumeracy’’ he meant to convey the concept of ‘‘inappropriate numeracy’’. He cited Galton’s discovery of the ‘‘regression towards the mean’’ - the observation that tall parents have tall children, but not as tall as the parental mean (ie closer to the population mean). He found the integrals of the normal curves generated by his analyses difficult to handle and collaborated with Hamilton Dickson of Peterhouse who solved the mathematics. The results exactly fitted Galton’s expectations based on the assumption of infinite numbers of hereditary particles and blending. The success of the method blinded Galton to flaws in the underlying principles and led to misunderstanding to the detriment of Galton’s reputation, such as the ideas of Lysenko who misunderstood the principles and others who had less excuse of ignorance. In analysing eye colours, Galton failed to distinguish the different ways that two of four grandparents could have light eyes (an irrelevant distinction on the assumption of blending) and so missed a crucial observation which would probably have led to his discovery of Mendel’s laws. Thus, concluded Professor Edwards, the various problems which have done Galton discredit in the eyes of posterity derive from his obsession with mathematical models which he did not understand rather than intuitive models which he did.
Professor Banton noted that the variety of ways in which the term ‘‘race’’ was used by 19th century commentators on evolution require 20th century interpretations of their writings to be treated with the utmost caution. Galton seems to have used the term with particular vagueness and perhaps to have meant no more than the constantly varying average of the characteristics of those meant to belong to the race. Others have interpreted his statements with hostility and some of his work, in which he graded races - the ancient Greeks rated 2 points (out of 8) higher than Britons who in turn rated 2 points higher than negroes - does encourage misunderstanding. But it is crucial to understand the historical context in which these statements were made, before the development of population genetics and the observation that races can be characterised by gene frequencies. Furthermore, argued Professor Banton, we can understand as no one of Galton’s generation could, that ethnic groups are self-defined. Accordingly all the senses in which Galton used the term ‘‘race’’ should be abandoned and his views recognised as having no meaning outside their historical perspective.
Galton pointed to high incidence of greatness in certain families as evidence of an hereditary basis. However, this could equally be due to environmental influences and Professor Eysenck considered the unpromising family backgrounds of great men such as Newton and Faraday as far more compelling evidence of the genetic rather than environmental basis of their genius. Attempts to assess the IQs of 300 historical geniuses from their known behaviour at various ages suggests that intelligence is a necessary but not a sufficient precondition of genius - in addition a factor which might be termed ‘‘creativity’’ is required. While creativity is apparently normally distributed in the population, creative achievement follows a J-shaped distribution - in a population of size N, 50% of achievement is by √N of the population. The inference is that achievement depends on the multiplicative rather than the additive effect of a number of normally distributed variables - if any one is zero then so is the net result. Creative geniuses often exhibit behaviour which, while not of itself psychotic, is particularly prevalent among psychotics. It may be that genius is correlated with an underlying genetic predisposition to psychosis which leads to a wider concept of relevance than is normal, thus permitting original associations of ideas. Other factors correlated with genius are sex (most geniuses are male), youth and a birthday in or around February.
Galton’s writings emphasise the variety of human faculties and types and the importance of numerical analysis. He founded in 1907 the Eugenics Education Society to set forth the science of eugenics and to ‘‘spread the laws of heredity as they are surely known’’. Galton’s interest in education was primarily in assessing pupil performance and the efficacy of teaching methods. He deplored the reluctance of educationists to take stock of their methods and results and himself conducted measurements of fidgeting among pupils which he took to be an indicator of teacher performance. The results were published in Nature which had been founded at the instigation of Galton and his friend Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Galton’s views particularly influenced his physician’s son who went on to become the educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt. Partly as a result of Burt’s work, the gulf between teacher and research has been bridged, as Galton hoped it would. For Galton, the emphasis on improving the quality of life inherent in his conception of eugenics meant that education must be important - he drew an analogy with a gardener nurturing plants and asked what would happen if the gardener’s tenure depended on the will of the weeds.
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The second half of this report will appear in the next issue of the Newsletter.
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