Eugenics: A very dark history
This was the first book I read, very early in 2023, as part of my self-imposed, year-long challenge that I explained in an earlier blog . The page numbers I give below relate to the hardback version. As a psychologist who spent a lot of his career studying individual differences, I naturally have taken an interest in most offshoots of this broad field; including how, in some hands, interest in individual differences segued, via studying the inheritance of those differences, into a set of socio-political ideas which Francis Galton called " eugenics " (see Rutherford's footnote, p.40, which quotes the passage where Galton's first used the term, in 1883). Even if I hadn't had a special interest in this topic, then Rutherford's book would have been an enjoyable, informative and thought-provoking read. He writes with a fluid style that many scientists struggle to attain. He also tries to emulate J.B.S Haldane's use of the witty (and cutting) footnote, and he ...