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Cargando... Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galtonpor Martin Brookes
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A popular biography of Galton, lacking any references at all, most unfortunately (and even an index). A decent treatment of Galton's wide-ranging career; it wasn't all eugenics. Exploration, experimentation, and eccentricity all figure prominently too. As a quick intro, just fine, but serious readers will likely want more. ( ) Three stars only. The first & last chapters add nothing and would not be out of place in a Sunday supplement. There are NO INDEX and NO REFERENCES!!!!! If I met the editor in the street in Galton's time I would no doubt (like Admiral Fitz Roy) throw a whip at his feet and say "Consider yourself horsewhipped, Sir!". Also the author pokes fun at Galton's letter "Cutting a cake on scientific principles", which was a reasonable note on cutting slices from a cake so that no cut surfaces should be exposed to dry out. Still a readable introduction to the Victorian age's more eccentric scientists. After reading, you can read the original Galton material on www.galton.org. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, was one of the Victorian eras great polymaths. He explored unknown areas in Africa, wrote a best selling travel book, pioneered psychiatric and statistics techniques, discovered weather patterns and found how to make the best cup of tea. However his most (in)famous theory was eugenics, the study of selective breeding in humans. A theory mired in atrocity and very much feared today (designer babies anyone?). Galton had a fascinating life and Brookes account eminently shows this. Easy to read, shot through with wry humour and nicely balanced you come away with a good understanding of a man who could easily of been demonised. His legacy to science is laid bare for all to see and it is astonishingly wide ranging. In fact my only criticism is I would have liked to see more of his experiments (one I believe was recently used by Derren Brown to 'predict' the UK lottery). Unexpectedly I also found it highly relevant, eugenics has not disappeared just renamed and it is extremely interesting to see where it came from. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
'Count wherever you can' was the motto of Sir Francis Galton s extraordinary life. His measuring mind left its mark all over the scientific landscape. Explorer, inventor, meteorologist, psychologist, anthropologist and statistician, Galton was one of the great Victorian polymaths. But it was in the fledgling field of genetics where he made his most indelible impression. Galton kick-started the enduring nature/nurture debate, and took hereditary determinism to its darkest extreme. Consumed by his eugenic vision, he dreamed of a future society built on a race of pure-breeding supermen. Plagued by illness and poor mental health, Galton often let his obsessions run away with him. He turned tea-making into a theoretical science, counted the brush strokes on his portrait, and created a beauty map of the British Isles, ranking its cities on the basis of their feminine allure. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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