Bidspirit auction | GALTON FRANCIS: (1822-1911)

GALTON FRANCIS: (1822-1911) - GALTON FRANCIS: (1822-1911) English polymath, a proponent of social Darwinism, eugenics and scientific racism. Galton was a a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. An 8vo printed pamphlet titled Free-Will—Observations and Inferences , being an offprint of the original journal article published in Mind , a Quarterly Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, No. XXXV, 1884. Signed ( ´From the Author´ ) by Galton in pencil to the upper margin of the first page. The eight-page pamphlet reprsents an interesting psychological essay in which Galton subjects the philosophical question of free will to his characteristically empirical methods, recording the results of an extended experiment in systematic introspection. Galton explains that for a period of six weeks, and intermittently thereafter, he observed his own apparently voluntary decisions, attempting to reconstruct the circumstances and antecedent mental processes which had influenced each act. His observations led him towards a markedly deterministic interpretation of human behaviour and the striking conclusion that ´man is little more than a conscious machine´ . Some light age wear and staining, G Free-Will—Observations and Inferences was originally published in Mind , Vol. IX, No. 35, July 1884, pp. 406-413.