In 1865, British polymath Francis Galton published his initial thoughts about the scientific field that would become 'eugenics.' The same year, Russian physician Vasilii Florinskii addressed similar issues in a sizeable treatise, entitled Human Perfection and Degeneration. Initially unheralded, Florinskii's book would go on to have a remarkable afterlife in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Russia. In this lucid and insightful work, Nikolai Krementsov argues that the concept of eugenics brings together ideas, values, practices, and fears energised by a focus on the future. It has proven so seductive to different groups over time because it provides a way to grapple with fundamental existential questions of human nature and destiny. With and Without Galton develops this argument by tracing the life-story of Florinskii's monograph from its uncelebrated arrival amid the Russian empire's Great Reforms, to its reissue after the Bolshevik Revolution, its decline under Stalinism, and its subsequent resurgence: first, as a founding document of medical genetics, and most recently, as a manifesto for nationalists and racial purists. Krementsov's meticulously researched 'biography of a book' sheds light not only on the peculiar fate of eugenics in Russia, but also on its convoluted transnational history, elucidating the field's protean nature and its continuing and contested appeal to diverse audiences, multiple local trajectories, and global trends. It is required reading for historians of eugenics, science, medicine, education, literature, and Russia, and it will also appeal to the general reader looking for a deeper understanding of this challenging subject.

This vivid biography of the father of eugenics is also a superb portrait of science in the Victorian era. 10 halftones & 26 line illustrations.

"Examines three projects in late nineteenth-century scientific photography: the endeavors of Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Develops new theoretical perspectives on the history of photographic technology, as well as the history of scientific imaging more generally"--

Reproduction of the original: Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development by Francis Galton

This edition first published in 1970. Francis Galton has been honoured as the founder of biostatics and one of the creators of modern psychology. His principal aim was to establish a body of statistical knowledge about mental heredity which would result in a new pattern of behaviour for society. The relationship between outstanding men had led him to conclude that mental traits are inherited, and that an ideal society would take advantage of this "fact". In this particular work, which he termed a "Natural History of the English Men of Science of the present day", he examined at great length the antecedents, environment, education and hereditary features of the most prominent men of science in order to establish certain laws relating to heredity. It is a landmark in the transition from introspective to objective methods in biological and psychological research, and the author’s statistical, nonanecdotal approach was to prove immensely fruitful for the development of psychology. Indeed the questionnaire included in the work is probably the earliest in existence. As Professor Cowan points out in her introduction, historians as well as scientists intent upon a deeper understanding of the Victorian mind will find much of interest in this remarkable book.