Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton ( born February 16, 1822 in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, † January 17, 1911 in Haslemere, Surrey ) was a British naturalist and writer. He was knighted in 1909 and was - like his cousin Charles Darwin - a grandson of Erasmus Darwin.

In total, he wrote over 340 articles and books. Due to its versatility, he made himself a name in various disciplines. He worked as a geographer and explorer of Africa, developed as a meteorologist, among other things, the first weather map and dealt with the theory of heredity, especially the inheritance of intelligence and talent, with his work Hereditary Genius was perceived of 1869 in many parts of the intellectual world. According to his friend Karl Pearson was " the improvement of the human race " was his goal. In connection with his studies he conducted various statistical methods, eg he coined the term regression (including regression to the mean ) in 1889 in the study of heredity and applied along with Pearson correlation coefficient for the first time to the concept. He also created research area and concept of eugenics, is considered the father of fingerprint data, as a co-founder of differential psychology and - together with Wilhelm Wundt - experimental psychology. Furthermore, he is a developer and namesake of the Galtonbretts, a model for the demonstration of probability distributions, and the Galtonpfeife, an instrument for generating extremely high notes.

Life

Childhood and youth (1822-1838)

Francis Galton was born near Sparkbrook, Birmingham on February 16, 1822 on the family estate Larches. He was the ninth and last child of Samuel Tertius Galton of his father, a son Samuel John Galton, and his mother Frances Anne Violetta, a daughter of Erasmus Darwin, which he had the same grandfather as Charles Darwin. The Galton were especially successful arms manufacturers and bankers, who belonged to the religious community of the Quaker, while at the Darwin respected physicians and scientists dominated.

His older siblings, especially his sisters, it had been a favorite activity to be able to take care of the little Francis. According to later testimony of his sister Elizabeth Anne (1808-1906) had her mother even pay attention to the clock, so that all were equal care long for the boy. Perhaps it is also in this care, which was expressed in the Teach of speaking, reading, writing and arithmetic, due to Francis at the age of 12 months, all capital letters, and after 18 months, the other could read. With two and a half years, he was able to independently read books, with four years he already mastered many Latin and French words, was able to both divide and multiply, and read at the age of six years already works of Shakespeare and other adult literature.

With five years Galton came to a school near his parents' estate, in which he distinguished himself by his services, with eight and a half years he was sent to a boarding school in Boulogne -sur -Mer. Here he was first included in a higher class in which his classmates were six to seven years older than he. When it became clear that he could not keep up with their knowledge of the classical languages ​​, however, he was restored to a lower class. With ten years he moved to a private school in Kenilworth, in which it was only six students and in his natural history interests have been very encouraged. The time in the King Edward 's School, Birmingham, he attended the ages of 13 and 16 ½ years, Galton commented contrast with the sentence " I learned nothing ... ". By far the biggest role had been played during this school of classical language teaching and explicitly Latin grammar, whereas Galton was more interested in the natural sciences, technical developments and English literature.

Medical studies (1838-1844)

The fact that Francis Galton doctor should be, especially his mother wish had been their father Erasmus Darwin and their half-brother Robert Darwin had brought it to reputable doctors. After he had made a study tour of Europe in 1838, he began in the autumn of the same year with the first stage of medical training at the Birmingham General Hospital. In addition to the monitoring of physicians in their home visits and emergencies here stood out the strong scientific interest Galton. So he used his activity to systematic experiments and experiments on himself, among other things, he tried any means to himself and went the list of drugs alphabetically by doing. When he had almost reached the end of ' C' in the strong irritant to mucous membrane croton, he let go of this method, however, from.

After a brief stint at King's College in London from October 1839, where he received awards for his achievements in many areas, Galton matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His ambition was here less focused on the learning of medical knowledge than on completing math exams with distinction. However, he made ​​the one hand, his health and on the other hand his broad range of interests, which he wanted to align the math alone, a spanner in the works.

Ever Francis Galton had often to fight while studying medicine with health, psychosomatic problems, which may therefore also touched that he could with the life of a doctor not identify and medicine had only studied because his parents wanted this. Conventional careerism and even pursuit of knowledge, which should appear to him later as a desirable goal of man par excellence, he criticized in written during his studies poems a long sentence.

In October 1844 he had the chance to help. When his father died in that month, he inherited a large fortune, and was thus no longer rely on a professional. He left the University, as his cousin Charles Darwin a few years earlier, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Research trips ( 1845-1851/55 )

In the years 1845 and 1846, Francis Galton visited Egypt and drove along the Nile up to Khartoum in Sudan. From there he traveled along to Beirut, Damascus and, finally, the Jordan. In the following three years he enjoyed after his return, the independent life of a wealthy gentleman and spent the time with sailing, fishing and hunting in different regions of England.

After he connected the Royal Geographical Society, he broke in April 1850 to a carefully planned research trip to South Africa, which he self-financed. He was accompanied by the English - Swedish explorer Charles John Andersson, who should stay longer in the area. During these trips, explored and mapped it " Damaraland " and " Ovamboland " and later wrote about his travels: " I've seen enough wild race to get as much material that I can think about the rest of my life " ("I saw enough of savage races, to give me stuff to think about all the rest of my life " (Times, Dec. 1, 1886) ).

After his return in 1851 he published the following year, his report "Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa" ​​, which was not only perceived in the UK and for which he the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society and the Silver Medal of the French Geographical Society obtained.

Based on the acquired reputation as a geographer and explorer in 1855 he wrote the bestseller The Art of Travel, a guidebook for travelers.

Publications and developments ( 1851/55-1909 )

1853 Francis Galton married Louisa Butler and moved in with her ​​in 1857 in Southern Kensington, a district of London, where he was to live for the rest of his life. While the marriage remained childless, he made his various scientific fields a name. He was very active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, was its secretary general from 1863 to 1867, 1867 to 1872, the President of the geographical department and 1877-1885 President of the anthropology department. In 1883 he founded the Galton Laboratory, in which were mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics under one roof.

Meteorology

Galton identified first anticyclones and introduced the use of maps that show the air pressure of a region, a. In his book Meteorographica of 1863 for the first time weather data were systematically collected, analyzed and evaluated. He first published on April 1, 1875 in the Times a weather map ( which, however, still showed the weather from the day before ).

Eugenics and racial theories

Through the publication of the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection work, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle of Life of his cousin Charles Darwin in 1859 the life Francis Galton was given a new direction. Inspired by this work, he dealt with the basics of genetics. He turned the first empirical methods on the inheritance of mental characteristics, in particular the high talents to. His most famous work, Hereditary Genius (1869 ), can be regarded as a forerunner of behavioral genetics.

His alleged knowledge about the inheritance of traits, he also contributed to the human mind and introduced the concept of eugenics, by which he meant a doctrine which sets itself the goal to by " good breeding " the proportion of positively evaluated human genetic enlarge.

Galton claimed that all the differences between peoples necessarily be genetic in nature. The members of a "lower race" that are raised by whites, kept " a wild, untamable restlessness ," the " savages innate " is.

In Hereditary Genius (1869 ) Galton discussed the possibility of " improving the breed ". He hoped for a civilization, " where the pride would be encouraged in the race." At the same time declared Galton, that "there is mostly a completely unreasonable sentimentality towards the gradual extinction of a lower race." A possible approach, he explains:

Galton endowed a professorship in eugenics, which was in Galton's request, occupied in 1911 by his intellectual heirs of Karl Pearson.

Domestication

Galton was also interested in ways to domesticate animals - that is, to tame them and to breed for specific selection criteria. He found that almost all pets - such as dogs, sheep, cattle, goat, or horse - were domesticated as early as the history of man, while in historical times practically no additional animals were added. So to this day as no elephants, zebras or cheetahs were domesticated. " It seems that every animal had its chance to be domesticated, with a small number ... was domesticated long ago, most of the rest but, where it is sometimes stumbling block which only a tiny detail, is determined to eternal Wildsein. " Galton suggested that the prehistoric peoples already possessed an accurate knowledge of which large animals could be domesticated at all and which are not.

Psychology

Galton is also considered the founder of differential psychology, which refers to the differences between people on not a general level, where he developed test methods for the assessment of mental properties.

He has worked as a scientific first with the word association test, which he repeatedly performed on himself, which he used 75 different words, he had a few days earlier each written on a card. During the experiment, he then covered each on a card, and measured with a stopwatch its response time from the moment of the first eye contact to the formation of the first word association. Although he has logged but never published along with the response times in full His word associations, which, immediately understandable, given the importance he meted out his experiment itself.

"They lay bare the foundations of a man's thoughts with curious distinctness, and exhibit his mental anatomy with more vividness and truth than he would probably care to publish to the world. "

"They lay the foundations of the thoughts of a man in a remarkable clarity freely and form the anatomy of his mind lively and truthful, as if he would like it probably show the world. "

Galton's word association test was later among others, Wundt, Kraepelin, Ebbinghaus (1885 ) and Jung and Riklin (1904 ) adopted or developed.

1884 formulated Galton was the first to Sedimentationshypothese in approach, an important assumption about the relationship between language (and concepts contained therein ), and personality traits.

Daktyloskopie

Francis Galton founded fingerprinting method scientifically after Henry Faulds and William James Herschel had made proposals for the identification of criminals through fingerprint examinations. First he was interested in the mathematical aspect. In 1888 he was commissioned by the British colonial government in British India, to develop a simple -to-use in practice person recognition system.

Statistics

To give his investigations empirical validity, Francis Galton used tools in statistics. He developed, for example, along with his friend Karl Pearson correlation coefficient was in the 1870s and 1880s pioneer in the use of the normal distribution, and introduced the method of regression. He also developed the Galtonbrett, a model for the demonstration of probability distributions.

Intelligence of the masses

1906 Galton visited the annual livestock fair west England, in which a oxen - weight estimation Competition was organized. For sixpence could give each its estimation. A total of 787 persons, both clueless and some experts participated and gave off a tip.

Galton decided to an experiment to prove the stupidity of the mass: He evaluated the nearly 800 estimates statistically. The average of all estimates ( 1207 pounds ) came to the actual weight of the Ox ( 1198 pounds ) surprisingly close (deviation of 0.8 percent). Galton's attempt to prove the stupidity of the mass in this way was thus failed. He named his knowledge Vox Populi (Latin for " voice of the people " ), in reference to the classic proverb " Vox populi, vox Dei ".

End of life (1909-1911)

For his merits Francis Galton was knighted in 1909. From May to December 1910 he worked - in the hope to reach a wider audience - on a novel titled The Eugenic College of Kantsaywhere. The publishing house Methuen refused publication.

Sir Francis Galton died on 17 January 1911.

Awards

1860 Galton was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1886, the Royal Medal in 1902, the Darwin Medal in 1910 and the Copley Medal awarded him.

Some works of Francis Galton

• Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1852
• The Art of Travel, Murray, 1855
• Meteorographica, Macmillan, 1863
• Hereditary Genius. London 1869. German genius and inheritance, Leipzig 1910
• English Men of Science: their Nature and Nurture. London 1874
• Fingerprints, Macmillan, 1892
• Decipherment of blurred finger prints, Macmillan, 1893
• Fingerprint Directories Macmillan, 1895. (PDF file, 19.62 MB)
• Memories of My Life. London 1908
• Natural inheritance, Macmillan, 1889 ( Contains the description of Galtonbretts )

Swell

Literature on Francis Galton

• Raymond E. Fancher: Francis Galton and Phrenology. In: Psychology et Histoire. vol. 2, 2001, pp. 131-147, ZDB - ID 2060598-5.
• D. W. Forrest Francis Galton. The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius. Elek, London 1974, ISBN 0-236-15499-0.
• Nicholas Wright Gillham: A Life of Francis Galton. From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, inter alia, 2001, ISBN 0-19-514365-5.
• Karl Pearson: The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton. Vol 1: Birth in 1822 to marriage in 1853, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1914.
• Allan Sekula: The Body and the Archive. In: Herta Wolf ( ed.) paradigm Photography. Photo critique at the end of the photographic age. Volume 2: discourses of photography. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-29199-8, pp. 269-334 ( Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Science 1599).
• Charles Shaw: The weirdest birds of the world. Encyclopedia of Eccentrics. Heyne, Munich, ISBN 3-453-21174- X, pp. 65 ( Heyne 19, Heyne nonfiction 809).
• Lewis M. Terman: The intelligence quotient of Francis Galton in Childhood. In: American Journal of Psychology. 28, 1917, ISSN 0002-9556, pp. 209-215.