Eugenics

by Irving Fisher

Irving Fisher's treatise on Eugenics - the process of improving human genetic qualities thought favorable through selective breeding - summarizes the practice and defends it from detractors.



A strong advocate of eugenics since soon after its inception in the 1880s, Irving Fisher would frequently give talks where he passionately advanced the idea. The notion of selective breeding generated rumors and reproach almost from the inception; a good portion of this tract is aimed at debunking rumors that had sprung up.



As a historical text shedding insight into eugenics in the United States, Irvine Fisher's thoughts are a useful source. The author effectively presents the core arguments and justifications, quoting Mendelian genetics and giving examples of selective breeding in species other than humans. Fisher would go on to found the American Eugenics Society and serve as its first President in the 1920s.



Since the Second World War, eugenics has been generally dropped from serious discussion. It was a central pillar of Nazi German ideology; in the 1930s, it was applied to the extent of embarking upon a large scale breeding programs to promote characteristics viewed as Aryan and raise Germany's birthrate. These negative connotations led many who had previously vaunted the practice of eugenics to disavow their beliefs.

31 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1913

About the author

Irving Fisher was an American economist, inventor, and social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt deflation has been embraced by the Post-Keynesian school.
Fisher made important contributions to utility theory and general equilibrium. He was also a pioneer in the rigurous study of intertemporal choice in markets, which led him to develop a theory of capital and interest rates.[4] His research on the quantity theory of money inaugurated the school of macroeconomic thought known as "monetarism." Both James Tobin and Milton Friedman called Fisher "the greatest economist the United States has ever produced."
Fisher was perhaps the first celebrity economist, but his reputation during his lifetime was irreparably harmed by his public statements, just prior to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, claiming that the stock market had reached "a permanently high plateau." His subsequent theory of debt deflation as an explanation of the Great Depression was largely ignored in favor of the work of John Maynard Keynes. His reputation has since recovered in neoclassical economics, particularly after his work was revived in the late 1950s and more widely due to an increased interest in debt deflation in the Late-2000s recession. Some concepts named after Fisher include the Fisher equation, the Fisher hypothesis, the international Fisher effect, and the Fisher separation theorem.