MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu

STS.003 The Rise of Modern Science Spring 2008

For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms. STS.003

Spring 2007

Keywords for Week 12

Lecture 20: Eugenics

Darwin, Descent of Man (1871) Francis Galton, “eugenics” (1883) “the science of improving the stock” Jean Baptiste Lamarck Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics Richard Dugdale, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (1874) Karl Pearson Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics Charles Davenport Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Record Office Arthur Estabrook, The Jukes in 1915 (1916) Henry Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness (1912) Deborah Kallikak Race Suicide Fitter Family Contests Sterilization Laws Buck v. Bell, 1927 Carrie Buck Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “Three generations of imbeciles is enough”

Quotes

But are not our physical faculties and the strength, dexterity and acuteness of our senses, to be numbered among the qualities whose perfection in the individual may be transmitted? Observation of the various breeds of domestic animals inclines us to believe that they are, and we can confirm this by direct observation of the human race. Condorcet, Future Progress of the Human Spirit (1795)

If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius we might create. Francis Galton, “Hereditary Character and Talent” (1864)

Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree inferior in body or mind but such hopes are Utopian and will never be even partially realized until the laws of inheritance are thoroughly known. Darwin, Descent of Man (1871) We cannot reform the criminal nor cure the insane from the standpoint of heredity; the taint varies not with their moral or mental conduct. These are products of somatic cells; the disease lies deeper in their germinal constitution. Karl Pearson

The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his kind ... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard, mental and physical, of parentage. Karl Pearson, Darwinism, Medical Progress and Parentage (1912)

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. … three generations of imbeciles is enough. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Buck v. Bell, U.S. Supreme Court, 274 US 200 (1927)

Lecture 21: Molecular biology

Rosalind Franklin King's College, London Sir John Randall Maurice Wilkins Raymond Gossling X-ray diffraction A and B forms of the DNA Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge Francis Crick James Watson Linus Pauling Photo 51 Double helix structure, 1953 Tobacco mosaic virus