Sir Francis Galton

Posted by EbookReviewClub on November 14, 2011

Sir Francis Galton / FRS (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician. He was knighted in 1909.

Galton had a prolific intellect, and produced over 340 papers and books throughout his lifetime. He also created the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies.

He was a pioneer in eugenics, coining the term itself and the phrase “nature versus nurture”. His book, Hereditary Genius (1869), was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics (the science of measuring mental faculties) and differential psychology and the lexical hypothesis of personality. He devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science. He also conducted research on the power of prayer, concluding it had none by its null effects on the longevity of those prayed for.

As the initiator of scientific meteorology, he devised the first weather map, proposed a theory of anticyclones, and was the first to establish a complete record of short-term climatic phenomena on a European scale. He also invented the Galton Whistle for testing differential hearing ability.

Fingerprints

In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (Fingerprints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints, 1893; and Fingerprint Directories, 1895) Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day.

The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880, but Galton was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, which assisted its acceptance by the courts (Bulmer 2003, p. 35). Galton pointed out that there were specific types of fingerprint patterns. He described and classified them into eight broad categories. 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.

Although Galton was not the first to propose the use of fingerprints for identification (Sir William Herschel had used them in India for this purpose) he was the first to place their study on a scientific basis and so lay the groundwork for their use in criminal cases. Sir Francis Galton discovered that fingerprints offered no firm clues to an individual’s intelligence or genetic history, he was able to scientifically prove that no two fingerprints are identical cause of the uniqueness, by minutiae, of individual prints.

Galton’s system was later modified by Sir Edward R Henry, who became chief of police in London. In 1901, Scotland Yard officially adopted the Galton-Henry system of fingerprinting. Today, it’s the most widely used system of fingerprint classification in the world.

Heredity, historiometry and eugenics

The publication by his cousin Charles Darwin of The Origin of Species in 1859 was an event that changed Galton’s life. He came to be gripped by the work, especially the first chapter on “Variation under Domestication” concerning the breeding of domestic animals. An interesting fact is that Galton was present to hear the famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate at the British Association.

Galton devoted much of the rest of his life to exploring variation in human populations and its implications, at which Darwin had only hinted. In doing so, he eventually established a research programme which embraced many aspects of human variation, from mental characteristics to height, from facial images to fingerprint patterns. This required inventing novel measures of traits, devising large-scale collection of data using those measures, and in the end, the discovery of new statistical techniques for describing and understanding the data.

Galton was interested at first in the question of whether human ability was hereditary, and proposed to count the number of the relatives of various degrees of eminent men. If the qualities were hereditary, he reasoned, there should be more eminent men among the relatives than among the general population. He obtained his data from various biographical sources and compared the results that he tabulated in various ways. This pioneering work was described in detail in his book in 1869. He showed, among other things, that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when going from the first degree to the second degree relatives, and from the second degree to the third. He took this as evidence of the inheritance of abilities. He also proposed adoption studies, including trans-racial adoption studies, to separate the effects of heredity and environment.

The method used in Hereditary Genius has been described as the first example of historiometry. To bolster these results, and to attempt to make a distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ (he was the first to apply this phrase to the topic), he devised a questionnaire that he sent out to 190 Fellows of the Royal Society. He tabulated characteristics of their families, such as birth order and the occupation and race of their parents. He attempted to discover whether their interest in science was ‘innate’ or due to the encouragements of others. The studies were published as a book, English men of science: their nature and nurture, in 1874. In the end, it promoted the nature versus nurture question, though it did not settle it, and provided some fascinating data on the sociology of scientists of the time.

Galton recognized the limitations of his methods in these two works, and believed the question could be better studied by comparisons of twins. His method was to see if twins who were similar at birth diverged in dissimilar environments, and whether twins dissimilar at birth converged when reared in similar environments. He again used the method of questionnaires to gather various sorts of data, which were tabulated and described in a paper The history of twins in 1875. In so doing he anticipated the modern field of behavior genetics, which relies heavily on twin studies. He concluded that the evidence favored nature rather than nurture.

Galton invented the term eugenics in 1883 and set down many of his observations and conclusions in a book, Inquiries into human faculty and its development. He believed that a scheme of ‘marks’ for family merit should be defined, and early marriage between families of high rank be encouraged by provision of monetary incentives. He pointed out some of the tendencies in British society, such as the late marriages of eminent people, and the paucity of their children, which he thought were dysgenic. He advocated encouraging eugenic marriages by supplying able couples with incentives to have children.

Galton’s study of human abilities ultimately led to the foundation of differential psychology and the formulation of the first mental tests.

LIST OF WORKS

The Teletype: a printing Electric Telegraph, 1850;
The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1853, in “Minerva Library of Famous Books,” 1889;
Notes on Modern Geography (Cambridge Essays, 1855, etc.);
Arts of Campaigning: an Inaugural Lecture delivered at Aldershot, 1855;
The Art of Travel, or Shifts and Contrivances available in Wild Countries,
1855, 1856, 1860 (1859); fourth edition, recast and enlarged, 1867, 1872;
Vacation Tourists and Notes on Travel, 1861, 1862, 1864;
Meteorographica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather, 1863;
Hereditary Genius: an Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences, 1869;
English Men of Science: their Nature and Nurture, 1874;
Address to the Anthropological Departments of the British Association (Plymouth, 1877);
Generic Images: with Autotype Illustrations (from the Proceedings of the Royal Institution), 1879;
Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, 1883;
Record of Family Faculties, 1884; Natural Inheritance, 1889;
Finger-Prints, 1892;
Decipherments of Blurred Finger-Prints (supplementary chapters to former work), 1893;
Finger-Print Directories, 1895;
Introduction to Life of W. Cotton Oswell, 1900;
Index to Achievements of Near Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society, 1904;
Eugenics: its Definition, Scope, and Aims (Sociological Society Papers, vols. I. and II.), 1905;
Noteworthy Families (Modern Science); And many papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Journals of the Geographical Society and the Anthropological Institute, the Reports of the British Association, the Philosophical Magazine, and Nature.

Galton also edited:

Hints to Travellers, 1878;
Life-History Album (British Medical Association), 1884, second edition, 1902;
Biometrika (edited in consultation with F.G. and W.F.R. Weldon), 1901, etc.; and under his direction was designed a
Descriptive List of Anthropometric Apparatus, etc., 1887.

LIST OF MEMOIRS

The following Memoirs by the author have been freely made use of in the following pages:

1863: The First Steps towards the Domestication of Animals (Journal of Ethnological Society);
1871: Gregariousness in Cattle and in Men (Macmillan’s Magazine);
1872: Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (Fortnightly Review);
1873: Relative Supplies from Town and Country Families to the Population of Future Generations (Journal of Statistical Society);
Hereditary Improvement (Fraser’s Magazine);
Africa for the Chinese (Times, June 6);
1875: Statistics by Intercomparison (Philosophical Magazine);
Twins, as a Criterion of the Relative Power of Nature and Nurture (Fraser’s Magazine, and Journal of Anthropological Institute);
1876: Whistles for Determining the Upper Limits of Audible Sound (S. Kensington Conferences, in connection with the Loan Exhibition of Scientific Instruments, p. 61);
1877: Presidential Address to the Anthropological Department of the British Association at Plymouth (Report of British Association);
1878: Composite Portraits (Nature, May 23, and Journal of Anthropological Institute);
1879: Psychometric Experiments (Nineteenth Century, and Brain, part vi.);
Generic Images (Nineteenth Century; Proceedings of Royal Institution, with plates);
Geometric Mean in Vital and Social Statistics (Proceedings of Royal Society);
1880: Visualised Numerals (Nature, Jan. 15 and March 25, and Journal of Anthropological Institute);
Mental Imagery (Fortnightly Review; Mind);
1881: Visions of Sane Persons (Fortnightly Review, and Proceedings of Royal Institution);
Composite Portraiture (Journal of Photographical Society of Great Britain, June 24);
1882: Physiognomy of Phthisis (Guy’s Hospital Reports, vol. xxv.);
Photographic Chronicles from Childhood to Age (Fortnightly Review);
The Anthropometric Laboratory (Fortnightly Review);
1883: Some Apparatus for Testing the Delicacy of the Muscular and other Senses (Journal of Anthropological Institute, 1883, etc.).

Memoirs in Eugenics.

1901: Huxley Lecture, Anthropological Institute (Nature, Nov. 1901); Smithsonian Report for 1901 (Washington, p. 523);
1904: Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims (Sociological Paper, vol. i., Sociological Institute);
1905: Restrictions in Marriage, Studies in National Eugenics, Eugenics as a Factor in Religion (Sociological Papers, vol. ii.);
1907: Herbert Spencer Lecture, University of Oxford, on Probability the Foundation of Eugenics.

The following books by the author have been referred or alluded to in the following pages: