GALTON AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Francis Galton can be credited with the first systematic, scientific attempt to both understand and measure human intelligence . Galton’s essential idea was that there are stable,biological differences in intelligence between people.‘I have no patience with the hypothesis . . . that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moraleffort,’ he wrote. ‘The experiences of the nursery, the school, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary’ (1892, p. 12). Galton considered intelligence to be a low-level property of our nervous system that we inherit from our parents.He believed that individual differences in intelligence reflect differences in the efficiency of operation of simple neural processes.
Galton pursued his theory in several ways – first, by constructing extensive family trees of ‘persons of reputation’ in one domain or another to investigate patterns in eminence and achievement within families. His book Hereditary Genius, first published in 1869, presents family trees of ‘Commanders, men of Literature and of Science, Poets, Painters and Musicians of whom history speaks’ to support his hypothesis.
Francis Galton can be credited with the first systematic, scientific attempt to both understand and measure human intelligence . Galton’s essential idea was that there are stable,biological differences in intelligence between people.‘I have no patience with the hypothesis . . . that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moraleffort,’ he wrote. ‘The experiences of the nursery, the school, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary’ (1892, p. 12). Galton considered intelligence to be a low-level property of our nervous system that we inherit from our parents.He believed that individual differences in intelligence reflect differences in the efficiency of operation of simple neural processes.
Galton pursued his theory in several ways – first, by constructing extensive family trees of ‘persons of reputation’ in one domain or another to investigate patterns in eminence and achievement within families. His book Hereditary Genius, first published in 1869, presents family trees of ‘Commanders, men of Literature and of Science, Poets, Painters and Musicians of whom history speaks’ to support his hypothesis.
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