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Genetics, Eugenics and Evolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Abstract
- Type
- Editor's Introduction
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 257 - 265
- Copyright
- Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1989
References
1 Brock, W. H., ‘Bernard John Norton: 1945–1984’, British Journal for the History of Science (1985) 18, pp. 342–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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13 Haller, for example, distinguishes between the racist ‘pessimistic’ faction which dominated American eugenics during the 1920s and a ‘moderate’ minority which came to prevail during the 1930s (op. cit. 8, chapter XI and pp. 122, 179–183). Although G. R. Searle does not define the term, he refers to a small minority of ‘reform eugenists’ in Britain before 1914 (op. cit. 8, p. 27 and passim.) which extended its influence during the 1930s (Searle, ‘Eugenics and Politics in Britain in the 1930s’, Annals of Science (1979), 36, pp. 159–169CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed). Garland Allen argues that a more moderate and scientifically defensible ‘new’ eugenics began to displace the ‘old’ eugenics in the United States from the mid-1920s (viz ‘The Misuse of Biological Hierarchies: the American Eugenics Movement, 1900–1940’, History and Philosophy of Life Sciences (1983), 5, pp. 105–128Google Scholar; and ‘The Role of Experts in Scientific Controversy’ in Engelhardt, H. Tristram and Caplan, Arthur L. (eds), Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 169–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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19 For example, Allen, (1987) op. cit. (13), pp. 172–173.Google Scholar
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21 Ludmerer, , op. cit. (20), p. 356.Google Scholar
22 Compare Ludmerer, 's claim in op. cit. (20), p. 358Google Scholar with ‘Men and Mice at Edinburgh’, Journal of Heredity (1939), 30, pp. 371–373.Google Scholar
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24 I have discussed this issue at greater length in ‘The I.Q. in History’, Social Studies of Science (1983), 13, pp. 465–477 on pp. 473–475.Google Scholar
25 Ludmerer, (op. cit. 20)Google Scholar also claimed R. C. Punnett and William Castle as converts, but Barker's evidence (this issue) makes the extent of this conversion doubtful.
26 Op. cit. (22). See also Paul, (op. cit. 23) and Roll-Hansen, (this issue).Google Scholar
27 Kevles, , op. cit. (8), p. 104.Google Scholar
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33 Kimmelman, B., ‘The American Breeders' Association: Genetics and Eugenics in an Agricultural Context, 1903–1913’, Social Studies of Science (1983), 13, pp. 163–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Garland, ‘The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940’, Osiris (1986), 2, pp. 225–264.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
34 Op. cit. (22), p. 373.Google Scholar
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37 Although they make little of it, even historians who emphasize the importance of intellectual factors have noticed how concerned geneticists were with the discipline's image. Cravens, for example, remarks that reputable biologists were quite willing to tolerate the eugenics movement and to perhaps even support some of its goals so long as the movement appeared disinterested, scientifically credible, and dignified. But the activities of Laughlin [an American racist who deployed genetic and eugenic arguments in promoting anti-immigration legislation] and others put science—genetics, after all, so far as the public could tell—in a distasteful and ugly light, (op. cit. [30], p. 177).
Ludmerer, too, observes that geneticists ‘were dismayed by the distorted image of genetics that eugenicists were popularizing’ (op. cit. 20, p. 354).
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