Article ID: CBB928770929

Francis Galton’s Regression Towards Mediocrity and the Stability of Types (2021)

unapi

A prevalent narrative locates the discovery of the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean in the work of Francis Galton. It is claimed that after 1885, Galton came to explain the fact that offspring deviated less from the mean value of the population than their parents did as a population-level statistical phenomenon and not as the result of the processes of inheritance. Arguing against this claim, we show that Galton did not explain regression towards mediocrity statistically, and did not give up on his ideas regarding an inheritance process that caused offspring to revert to the mean. While the common narrative focuses almost exclusively on Galton’s statistics, our arguments emphasize the anthropological and biological questions that Galton addressed. Galton used regression towards mediocrity to support the claim that some biological types were more stable than others and hence were resistant to evolutionary change. This view had implications concerning both natural selection and eugenics. The statistical explanation attributed to Galton appeared later, during the biometrician-mutationist debate in the early 1900s. It was in the context of this debate and specifically by the biometricians, that the development of the statistical explanation was originally attributed to Galton.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB928770929/

Similar Citations

Article Porter, Theodore M.; (2014)
The Curious Case of Blending Inheritance (/isis/citation/CBB001420141/)

Chapter Gissis, Snait B.; Jablonka, Eva; (2011)
The Exclusion of Soft (“Lamarckian”) Inheritance from the Modern Synthesis (/isis/citation/CBB001500089/)

Book Patrick Armstrong; (2019)
Alfred Russel Wallace (/isis/citation/CBB323050340/)

Thesis Cannariato, Christy A.; (2007)
The Probability of Progress: Resisting History in Galton and Modern Fiction,1869--1936 (/isis/citation/CBB001561289/)

Article Radick, Gregory; (2011)
Physics in the Galtonian Sciences of Heredity (/isis/citation/CBB001023997/)

Article Polizello, Andreza; Pereira Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr; (2012)
Modelos microscópicos de herança no século XIX (/isis/citation/CBB001212015/)

Article Bellhouse, David R.; (2009)
Karl Pearson's Influence in the United States (/isis/citation/CBB001033900/)

Thesis Bruce Richard Erick Peirson; (2015)
Evolution Under Our Feet: Anthony David Bradshaw (1926–2008) and the Rise of Ecological Genetics (/isis/citation/CBB047213503/)

Chapter Jablonka, Eva; (2011)
Lamarckian Problematics in Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001500093/)

Book Reid, Julia; (2006)
Robert Louis Stevenson, Science, and the Fin de Siècle (/isis/citation/CBB001030172/)

Book Kammerer, Paul; (2003)
Environmental Vitalism: The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (/isis/citation/CBB000471241/)

Article Stigler, Stephen M.; (2010)
Darwin, Galton and the Statistical Enlightenment (/isis/citation/CBB001035750/)

Thesis Hendrikse, Jesse Love; (2006)
Explanation and Inheritance (/isis/citation/CBB001561700/)

Authors & Contributors
Radick, Gregory
Jablonka, Eva
Bruce Richard Erick Peirson
Tamborini, Marco
Pereira Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr
Laubichler, Manfred
Concepts
Biology
Evolution
Inheritance
Genetics
Statistics
Anthropology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
Places
Great Britain
Americas
United States
Germany
Vienna (Austria)
Institutions
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment