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'Extreme Measures': Eminent Victorian, Alas - By DICK TERESI, NYTimes
EXTREME MEASURES: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton. By Martin Brookes. 298 pp. Bloomsbury.
... Francis Galton (1822-1911), the father of eugenics, was also looking for a few good men. Unfortunately, he wasn't one of them. Martin Brookes's ''Extreme Measures'' is a relentlessly readable book about this comical British bonehead. One has to admire Brookes's guts. The general rule for biographers is to choose a subject who is successful and revered (Winston Churchill, say) as opposed to one who is unsuccessful and reviled (say, Joey Buttafuoco). This biography is in the Buttafuoco tradition.
Galton was born rich, and early on was anointed a genius by a phrenologist because of his large head. He is credited with many inventions, including special glasses for reading newspapers underwater and the ''gumption reviver,'' a bucketlike contraption that drips water on students' heads to keep them awake. He broke with his half cousin Charles Darwin on natural selection, favoring large mutational jumps over Darwin's incremental change. Galton decided that J. S. Bach represented a brand-new species. He also formulated an equation to explain male-pattern baldness. The balding Galton hypothesized that his mighty brain had become a furnace fueled by his great knowledge, burning up his hair follicles. This also explained why women rarely go bald. And these were his good ideas.
As it turns out, a tiny brain rattled around inside Galton's skull. He could not learn geometry, algebra or trigonometry at Cambridge University. He was also unsuccessful as a medical student. A letter states: ''Cut a brace of fingers off yesterday and one the day before. -- Happy to operate on any one at home -- I am flourishing -- wish I could say same of my Patients.'' He began a lifelong fascination with measurement as a 13-year-old in school, where he was caned and birched frequently (though, in my opinion, not frequently enough). He timed his Greek teacher thrashing 11 pupils in eight minutes.
Galton was a good explorer. On a thousand-mile excursion through Africa, he charted previously unmapped Namibia. There he became enraptured by a well-endowed African woman, but, afraid to approach her, measured her curves from afar using his sextant. When an African king, as a gift, sent his half-naked niece, smeared in butter and red ocher, to Galton's tent for a night of passion, Galton ejected her, fearing stains to his white linen suit. Eugenics? Galton couldn't make it to first base.
His African cartography gained him entree to scientific societies, which lent credibility to a torrent of sloppy ideas; the most famous was eugenics. In an article, ''Hereditary Talent and Character,'' Galton listed 330 eminent men of science and literature. Many were related, and he concluded that ''eminence'' was hereditary. Other research convinced him North American Indians were ''melancholic''; Negroes possessed ''neither patience, reticence nor dignity''; and the Irish, after the potato famine, became ''low and coarse.'' Galton rated upper-class Victorians near the top, surpassed only by the ancient Greeks.
This sparked a plan: man (if not woman) could elevate himself to the level of the Greeks. Galton envisioned what Brookes calls ''a stud farm for intellectuals,'' a totalitarian nation of Newtons and Mozarts. (Women were just willing wombs.) Undesirables who procreated would be, in Galton's words, ''enemies to the State.'' The idea had legs. In America 35,000 citizens were sterilized by 1940. The effort in Nazi Germany was even more effective. One flaw in eugenics was evident in Galton's book ''English Men of Science.'' English scientists had big heads, but one in three was childless. In natural selection, reproduction is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and Galton's proposed studs were anything but. Galton himself was childless -- his major contribution to the species.
How did this buffoon gain such influence? Perhaps it was his track record. He pioneered psychological questionnaires, identical-twin studies, the modern weather map and statistical analysis, if we are to believe Brookes, which I don't. Brookes, a former evolutionary biologist -- in the Galton Laboratory, no less, at University College London -- backs up few of these claims. The book has no endnotes, no source notes, no bibliography and few citations in the text itself. Brookes is oblivious of details. For example, how could Galton have ''redefined what it meant to be a meticulous cartographer'' after flunking geometry and trig, two skills essential to surveying? Brookes also describes Galton shooting at more than 40 hippos in Africa without hitting one. How did he line up his sextant? Did Brookes read Galton's own paper on his African expedition? Galton writes about a gorge ''20 or 30 miles'' long, another gorge ''about 300 feet wide,'' and reports that with his sextant he ''guessed at'' the height of a cliff. ''Guessed at'' is not language one likes to see from a meticulous cartographer.
As for his giant head, a portrait in this book shows a rather pinheaded young Galton. Victor L. Hilts of the University of Wisconsin has pointed out that Galton included his own head circumference in ''English Men of Science.'' He was comparatively microcephalic, ranking 95th out of 99 measured scientists. A refreshingly comprehensive chapter on fingerprints hints at how Galton may have piled up so many accomplishments. Perhaps he stole them. Galton used his social position to usurp the work of Henry Faulds, the real pioneer, a story documented in the book ''Fingerprints,'' by Colin Beavan. Brookes's account, without attribution, is eerily similar to Beavan's. Brookes is a clever writer, but has apparently picked up some Galtonesque habits. One yearns for the originality of Joey Buttafuoco.
Dick Teresi is the author of ''Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science — From the Babylonians to the Maya.''
EXTREME MEASURES: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton. By Martin Brookes. 298 pp. Bloomsbury.
... Francis Galton (1822-1911), the father of eugenics, was also looking for a few good men. Unfortunately, he wasn't one of them. Martin Brookes's ''Extreme Measures'' is a relentlessly readable book about this comical British bonehead. One has to admire Brookes's guts. The general rule for biographers is to choose a subject who is successful and revered (Winston Churchill, say) as opposed to one who is unsuccessful and reviled (say, Joey Buttafuoco). This biography is in the Buttafuoco tradition.
Galton was born rich, and early on was anointed a genius by a phrenologist because of his large head. He is credited with many inventions, including special glasses for reading newspapers underwater and the ''gumption reviver,'' a bucketlike contraption that drips water on students' heads to keep them awake. He broke with his half cousin Charles Darwin on natural selection, favoring large mutational jumps over Darwin's incremental change. Galton decided that J. S. Bach represented a brand-new species. He also formulated an equation to explain male-pattern baldness. The balding Galton hypothesized that his mighty brain had become a furnace fueled by his great knowledge, burning up his hair follicles. This also explained why women rarely go bald. And these were his good ideas.
As it turns out, a tiny brain rattled around inside Galton's skull. He could not learn geometry, algebra or trigonometry at Cambridge University. He was also unsuccessful as a medical student. A letter states: ''Cut a brace of fingers off yesterday and one the day before. -- Happy to operate on any one at home -- I am flourishing -- wish I could say same of my Patients.'' He began a lifelong fascination with measurement as a 13-year-old in school, where he was caned and birched frequently (though, in my opinion, not frequently enough). He timed his Greek teacher thrashing 11 pupils in eight minutes.
Galton was a good explorer. On a thousand-mile excursion through Africa, he charted previously unmapped Namibia. There he became enraptured by a well-endowed African woman, but, afraid to approach her, measured her curves from afar using his sextant. When an African king, as a gift, sent his half-naked niece, smeared in butter and red ocher, to Galton's tent for a night of passion, Galton ejected her, fearing stains to his white linen suit. Eugenics? Galton couldn't make it to first base.
His African cartography gained him entree to scientific societies, which lent credibility to a torrent of sloppy ideas; the most famous was eugenics. In an article, ''Hereditary Talent and Character,'' Galton listed 330 eminent men of science and literature. Many were related, and he concluded that ''eminence'' was hereditary. Other research convinced him North American Indians were ''melancholic''; Negroes possessed ''neither patience, reticence nor dignity''; and the Irish, after the potato famine, became ''low and coarse.'' Galton rated upper-class Victorians near the top, surpassed only by the ancient Greeks.
This sparked a plan: man (if not woman) could elevate himself to the level of the Greeks. Galton envisioned what Brookes calls ''a stud farm for intellectuals,'' a totalitarian nation of Newtons and Mozarts. (Women were just willing wombs.) Undesirables who procreated would be, in Galton's words, ''enemies to the State.'' The idea had legs. In America 35,000 citizens were sterilized by 1940. The effort in Nazi Germany was even more effective. One flaw in eugenics was evident in Galton's book ''English Men of Science.'' English scientists had big heads, but one in three was childless. In natural selection, reproduction is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and Galton's proposed studs were anything but. Galton himself was childless -- his major contribution to the species.
How did this buffoon gain such influence? Perhaps it was his track record. He pioneered psychological questionnaires, identical-twin studies, the modern weather map and statistical analysis, if we are to believe Brookes, which I don't. Brookes, a former evolutionary biologist -- in the Galton Laboratory, no less, at University College London -- backs up few of these claims. The book has no endnotes, no source notes, no bibliography and few citations in the text itself. Brookes is oblivious of details. For example, how could Galton have ''redefined what it meant to be a meticulous cartographer'' after flunking geometry and trig, two skills essential to surveying? Brookes also describes Galton shooting at more than 40 hippos in Africa without hitting one. How did he line up his sextant? Did Brookes read Galton's own paper on his African expedition? Galton writes about a gorge ''20 or 30 miles'' long, another gorge ''about 300 feet wide,'' and reports that with his sextant he ''guessed at'' the height of a cliff. ''Guessed at'' is not language one likes to see from a meticulous cartographer.
As for his giant head, a portrait in this book shows a rather pinheaded young Galton. Victor L. Hilts of the University of Wisconsin has pointed out that Galton included his own head circumference in ''English Men of Science.'' He was comparatively microcephalic, ranking 95th out of 99 measured scientists. A refreshingly comprehensive chapter on fingerprints hints at how Galton may have piled up so many accomplishments. Perhaps he stole them. Galton used his social position to usurp the work of Henry Faulds, the real pioneer, a story documented in the book ''Fingerprints,'' by Colin Beavan. Brookes's account, without attribution, is eerily similar to Beavan's. Brookes is a clever writer, but has apparently picked up some Galtonesque habits. One yearns for the originality of Joey Buttafuoco.
Dick Teresi is the author of ''Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science — From the Babylonians to the Maya.''
