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Galton

Francis Galton

The Transmission of Hereditary Traits

Galton believed that a science of human heredity had to identify and study of the the exact processes by which hereditary traits were transmitted.

As mentioned elsewhere, Galton was greatly taken by his cousin Darwin's Theory of Pangenesis, and experimented with transfusing blood between rabbits, in a effort to isolate the mechanisms by which characteristics were passed between generations. However, he found that he could not rule out other causes of changes in the offspring of his experimental subjects.

Even so, Galton was convinced that heredity was much more than the sum of a myriad small causes. It had to be possible, he believed, to isolate discrete hereditary processes.

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The Body Politic : Adolphe Quetelet Francis Galton Cesare Lombroso Alphonse Bertillon Thomas Huxley