Early eugenists framed their goal as engineering applied to heredity

Evidence

Eugenics was pioneered simultaneously in several European countries; as in many other areas of modern intellect, English scholars vied for pride of place with their German colleagues. The Eugenics Education Society was founded in Britain in the nineteenth century (Galton established the highly successful journal Eugenics in 1883) and was given a tremendous boost by the panic caused by the poor physical and mental quality of army recruits discovered during the Boer war. British eugenists were not short of engineering ambitions. They posited in front of the educated public a truly breathtaking vista: … Would it not be possible to “breed out” certain grave hereditary ailments in the way that Mendelian geneticists had learned to breed “rustiness” out of wheat, and perhaps also to develop mental or physical faculties in men that were generally regarded as desirable?… Eugenics would then stand to genetics in rather the same relationship that engineering does to mathematics. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 404 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Heredity, the focus of eugenics programs, was not always deemed immutable, but also impressible, Schuller argues, that is to say, it could be transformed, reshaped, and refashioned through experiences. — Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar, “They Love Death as We Love Life”, 563 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nazi-era eugenics drew on mainstream scientific and modernist convictions; Eugenicists treated heredity as malleable through lived experience, not just fixed genes — Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar, “They Love Death as We Love Life”: The…, 563; British scientists framed eugenics as applied genetics analogous to engineering — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 404 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• British scientists framed eugenics as applied genetics analogous to engineering #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 404
• Eugenicists treated heredity as malleable through lived experience, not just fixed genes #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar, “They Love Death as We Love Life”, 563