Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development

GALTON, Francis

Published by London: Macmillan, 1883

About this Item

Octavo, original Publisher's maroon cloth. A good to very good copy with a bright spine and strong inner hinges. Internally clean and complete. Housed in a custom clamshell box. FIRST EDITION of this groundbreaking analysis of heredity by the founder of eugenics, with the first appearance of his coined word eugenics (page 24), with an original photographic frontispiece of composite portraits and four plates of analyses, one double-page in color. This is Galton s best-known work-on the inheritance of talent-scholarly, artistic, and athletic-the raw data being the records of notable families (DSB V:266). Employing the statistical techniques for which he became famous, Galton considers the influence of genetic inheritance in humans on everything from facial features to mental imagery, from fluency to enthusiasm. On the publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by his cousin, Charles Robert Darwin, Galton at once became a convert to the views there enounced and began reflecting on the influence of heredity on the human race. He had been impressed by his own observation with the fact that distinction of any kind is apt to run in families. He therefore made a series of statistical inquiries whereby he proved the heritability of genius of all kinds… He showed how the degree of relationship between any pair of attributes or any pair of individuals may be estimated by a numerical factor termed the correlation. He also gave a numerical estimate of the average contribution to each individual from his two parents and his remoter ancestry… The study of heredity led Galton to the conviction that the human race might gain an indefinite improvement by breeding from the best and restricting the offspring of the worst. To this study he gave the name eugenics, and it is probably by this that he will be best known (DNB). Galton s studies, strongly emphasizing nature over nurture ( heredity was a far more powerful agent in human development than nurture ), proved to be of profound importance throughout the 20th century, raising issues essential to the direction of a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, politics and genetic engineering. Garrison & Morton 230. Norman 866. Seller Inventory # 309

Bibliographic Details

Title: Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its ...

Publisher: London: Macmillan

Publication Date: 1883

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

Edition: 1st Edition