Mankind
Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Fall 2002)
pp. 81-98
David Starr Jordan on the Dysgenic
Effects of Dysfunctional Culture.
Ian McNish
David Starr Jordan, Chancellor of Stanford University,
typified the positive eugenicists who were writing
at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. In the
light of modern genetics it is reasonable to say that
he accurately identified the importance of reproductive
selection in determining the destiny of any breeding
population, and drew attention to the fact that while
culture came into existence as a factor which helped
promote the survival of the population which possessed
it, culture can also be dysfunctional and exert dysgenic
pressures on those who adhere to value systems which
run counter to nature's law of survival of the fittest.
