Berkeley Colloquia in History of Science and Technology - Spring 2009
Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
Theodore Porter
University of California- Los Angeles
Statistics of Mental Deficiency and the New Science of Human Heredity, 1890-1914
Despite the sharp conflicts between biometricians and Mendelians about how to investigate heredity, they agreed on a quantitative approach to the study of human heredity. Human genetics (eugenics) was based overwhelmingly on pedigrees and statistical records of heredity, introduced for their own reasons by asylums, prisons, and institutions for the feeble-minded. Eventually these formed the nucleus of scientific efforts that joined field research and psychiatric case histories with the analysis of numerical data. The methods of research on heredity were thus linked to liberal ideals for training up efficient citizens and for regulating “defectives.” Its ambitions were in many ways the goals of the rising welfare state.
4:00PM
Monday, April 6, 2009
279 Dwinelle Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
