Social Origins of Eugenics essays

Social Origins of Eugenics essays What are the origins and social implications of eugenisicm? Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, first used the term Eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development published in 1883.The word Eugenics is described as the science of improving the population by controlled breeding for desirable inherited characteristics and comes from the Greek for good breeding or good life. Although Galton initially studied medicine, he later chose to study mathematics and he also became a fervent advocate of social policies which encouraged supposedly superior beings to have children and discouraged lesser people from doing so. Galton first became interested in Eugenics after reading Darwins The Origin of Species. In the book, successful breeding is judged by the number of offspring an organism produces. However, based on this theory, it seemed to Galton that it was the inferior people who had the largest amount of offspring and he thought that this seemed to spoil and not improve our breed. Galton wrote two books- Hereditary Genius (1869) and Natural Inheritance (1889). He examined the family trees of various families of importance and recorded the occurrence of men appearing in the same lines. Galton never even thought about the fact that social opportunities were more readily available to the upper class- he just presumed that genius was passed on through genes. Galton wasnt just merely interested in the subject though. He wholeheartedly believed that there should be a system put in place to iradicate, what was is his mind, the inferior race. He proposed that a register of suitable families should be made so that the superior offspring could marry and reproduce and even went as far to suggest a financial incentive should be offered to help create a worthier race. ...