Lecture 12: Darwin's Legacy

Question 1

What was the 18th century intellectual movement?

Answer 1

promotion of reason, rational thought, and truth

Question 2

What was the pursuit of truth through scientific and rational means?

Answer 2

Look for empirical, physical evidence.

Question 3

What was reason over superstition?

Answer 3

-grounded in science

Question 4

What new attitudes towards disease emerge during the enlightenment?

Answer 4

New attitudes about bodies, diseases, mechanisms of behaviour (measure things that are normal, abnormal, repeating).

Question 5

What kind of classification system emerged during the enlightenment?

Answer 5

Classification systems of diseases as ontological entities with discrete symptoms
-science of nosology or systematics of disease

Question 6

During the enlightenment, clinical post-mortems became___. What is a clinical post-mortem?

Answer 6

• became common

- looking inside the bodies

Question 7

What did clinical post-mortems lead to?

Answer 7

A decisive shift in medical theory from the humeral system to a more mechanistic view

• We can, therefore, heal it.
• Defect and disease

Question 8

What did Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species introduce?

Answer 8

Introduces the theory of natural selection (origins evolve due to interaction with environment). From study on Galapagos Islands (classifying things).

Question 9

What did Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man discuss?

Answer 9

• confronts human evolution
• introduces idea of evolution
• discussed concept of survival of the fittest

Question 10

What did Charles Darwin believe about survival of the fittest? Who did this appeal to?

Answer 10

• Concept of survival of the fittest
• Humanitarian impulses harming our race because we aren’t letting survival of the fittest take place
• states, farmers, and progressive folks believed it

Question 11

What did Francis Galton and Darwin differ on?

Answer 11

Darwin acknowledged cultural influences and believed that some characteristics could be acquired.

Question 12

Who was the “father of eugenics”?

Answer 12

Francis Galton

Question 13

Who coined the term “eugenics”?

Answer 13

Francis Galton

Question 14

What does eugenics mean?

Answer 14

Nobility in birth

Question 15

When was Francis Galtons original lecture on eugenics? What did he believe and what did eugenics become?

Answer 15

• 1904 original lecture on eugenics, published din 1909 in collection of essays on eugenics
• way of thinking how we should govern our society
• the idea of eugenics becomes a political rallying point

Question 16

Who coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’?

Answer 16

Herbert Spencer

Question 17

What is survival of the fittest in the context of this course?

Answer 17

Social and philosophical ideas about how to improve humanity infused with new advances in biology and faith in science.
-Through generations we can alter our biology by who we mate with.

Question 18

What is the social theory from late 19th Century, which promoted the improvement of the human ‘race’ through various forms of intervention?

Answer 18

Eugenics

Question 19

What did progressive thinkers believe about eugenics?

Answer 19

• Improve society through science
• “we can improve lives”, promoted improvement of human race
• generational changes

Question 20

What scientific developments contributed to the eugenics movement?

Answer 20

• statistics (vital and medical)
• better records of families, incomes, etc.
• rise of scientific and medical authority (interventions justified to study and perfect the race)
• fuelled both nature and nurture proponents

Question 21

What were the social developments that contributed to the eugenics movement?

Answer 21

• North America experienced massive waves of immigration

- Intensified fears about the kind of society that would develop in North America (Canada)

Question 22

What were the changes in immigration laws?

Answer 22

• control borders
• change our laws to filter in an out
• extremely racist language
• not allowing people to marry cross race

Question 23

What did the belief that mixing races would lead to?

Answer 23

dilution of the ‘good stock’

Question 24

What three things were eugenics philosophies reflected in?

Answer 24

1) Nativist attitudes
2) Immigration laws
3) Public health policies

Question 25

What idea did Eugenics build upon?

Answer 25

The belief that North Americans could avoid the problems of the past

• idea that people who are part animal are coming into country and will infect country
• idea that we can protect our society with barriers and laws to stop this

Question 26

Why did researchers start tracking certain families?

Answer 26

If we trace poor and inbred families we see they disproportionately contribute to crime, vice, etc. Eugenics believed that we need to get rid of these people.