Jim Dougan wrote:
Wow - I certainly seem to have touched a sensitive nerve with the Brits and Canadians....
You will be bemused to know that I was actually born and raised in the US. This is not an issue of national pride, but one of historical accuracy. The "sensitivity" was to your claim that Galton was the main instigator eugenic "danger." It is true that he invented the term, but, once again, Galton's form of eugenics was quite mild in comparison to the proposals and practices that went by that name later and in other places. Indeed, it might be interesting to see what would happen in a class, already primed to see eugenics as "evil," if Galton's proposal was shown in its relevant historical context. Galton's propsal -- believing "talent" or "genius" (as he called it) to be hereditary -- was essentially that instead of monied, landed, nobility automatically intermarrying regardless of the mental qualities of the pair, that society should encourage intermarriage among those showing high degrees of mental talent, more or less regardless of their heraldic standing (or lack of it). It's practically democratic! Can't you see Old Vic spitting up her tea at the very thought! Quick! Call the Guards! :-)
>Honestly, I wasn't even thinking about Galton being British, and I wasn't
> trying to claim that American eugenicists are somehow less culpable. > I choose to have them read "Hereditary Genius" because it is so clear in
> its presentation and so misguided in its methodology. It is something
> that a first-year student can reasonable critique.
If you want something entertaining and juicy, perhaps you should try Henry Goddard's (1913) _The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness_, especially the final chapter entitled "What is to be Done?" (Interesting in no small part because its title curiously echoes the title of Lenin's famous 1902 tract on the future overthrow of the Russian monarchy.) The Goddard book is freely available on-line at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/
I disagree a bit with Allen, though..... I realize that it is difficult to evaluate the past using today's moral sensibilities (one of the key points in favor of moral relativism, as a matter of fact). However, it almost always seems to be the case that these past practices served the interests of someone in power, and the practices were little questioned because they served the existing power structure. Eugenics was rarely questioned in Britain partly because it served the imperialistic mindset. It was ok to be imperialistic because after all these were lesser races we were dealing with...
Of course it is true that "past practices served the interests of someone in power" -- so do present practices, for that matter. The point, however, was that judging historical figures in light of present sensibilities is (to a first approximation) pointless. We learn little about the past that way (except the faux lesson that we "know better" now). Reducing historical research to the evaluation of past people and events against a moral backdrop alien to their time and place can hardly serve the goal of better understanding of the past. It is easy to dismiss the ideas of "eugenics," "lesser races," and "imperialism" (while, note, we are right in the midst of a more audacious form of imperialism than we have seen in a long while) as being the products of racism. It is much harder to come to an understanding of how men and women of more or less good will (no less than we have now) could have come to see the world in those terms.
Note that another controversial idea - communism - had its origins at about the same time as eugenic. Communism was widely attacked from the outset precisely because it questioned the existing power structures.
Only if one regards 1848 and 1883 as "about the same time." They were no more the same time to people then than, say, 1969 and 2004 are to us.
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
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