Eugenics was an ideology that arose in the late nineteenth century to promote improving human heredity. It posed as a scientific enterprise, but combined ethical presuppositions and political action with research on human heredity. For example, there was no scientific way to determine what constituted "improvement." Progress and improvement, however, were the watchwords of many nineteenth-century intellectuals who often failed to recognize how such concepts can be culturally loaded. Indeed, many eugenicists supposed that health, strength, intellectual acuity, and even beauty were undeniably favorable traits and should be promoted in human reproduction. Another closely related ideology was that of Social Darwinism, which nevertheless has its own distinctive if interactive history. While Social Darwinism stressed natural selection and thus human competition, eugenics focussed on artificial selection. Though some eugenicists saw eugenics as a way to evade Social Darwinism, others were avid Social Darwinists.

Classic Eugenics

The basic idea of...