40 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen Jay GouldThe Mismeasure Of Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Measuring Bodies: Two Case Studies on the Apishness of Undesirables”
In Chapter 4, Gould presents two additional 19th-century theories of measurable intelligence inspired by evolutionary theory: recapitulation (the reconstruction of genetic lineages) and criminal anthropology.
Recapitulation, a theory originated by the zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), was also used to illustrate the stages of human psychological or educational development. For scientists interested in ranking human groups, recapitulation was seen as a “general theory of biological determinism” wherein the “adults of inferior groups must be like children of superior groups” (144). In this framework, adult blacks and women who behaved like white male children were proof of the evolution of white males. Scientists from wide-ranging fields developed numerous theories outlining a lineage of white superiority, including E.D. Cope (paleontology), D.G. Brinton (anthropology), G. Stanley Hall and James Sully (psychology), and Herbert Spencer (evolutionary biology).
Theories of recapitulation ceased with the onset of Louis Bolk’s theory of neoteny, which proposed an opposing idea that the “juvenile traits of ancestors develop so slowly in descendants that they become adult features” (148). Although this theory contradicts the essential principal of recapitulation, like the recapitulationists, Bolk and other scientists of the period used neoteny to justify their arguments for the superiority of whites and inferiority of blacks.
Gould then introduces the last theory of body measurement, Cesare Lombroso’s theory of the criminal man, which is based on “a specific evolutionary theory based upon anthropometric data” (153). In this theory, criminals are identifiable by the “apish” anatomy they inherit and are born with (154). Lombroso listed specific atavistic physical and socially-inherited traits, and concluded 40% of born criminals would act upon their “hereditary compulsion” to commit crime (162). In the wake of public and scientific criticism, Lombroso added sickness and degeneration as reasons for criminality. In practice, Lombroso’s theory was used to justify a view of a “conservative political argument” that “people are what they are as a result of their birth” (166).
In an Epilogue to the chapter, Gould notes that in the 20th century, measurement of the cranial index or signs of criminal stigmata have been discarded, only to be replaced with research investigating connections between violence and a malfunction in specific regions of the brain, or links between criminal behavior and chromosomal anomaly in males.
Chapter 4 Analysis
In this chapter, Gould introduces two additional late 19th-century theories that were used to measure the intelligence of racial groups. In a world in which all underlying governing principles are built upon ideas of racial superiority, the relative invisibility of other racial groups is a fact of life. Those who do not possess the intelligence or moral capacity to reason are not treated as equals because they aren’t equals. In fact, treating someone as equal who does not hold the capacity to be one’s equal might, in fact, be the cruelty.
Under this rationale, scientific theories that confirm a racist ideology are helpful in explicitly clarifying what society implicitly knows to be true. Agassiz and Broca were the first to deliver quantifiable data confirming this line of reasoning, and the scientists who followed in their footsteps continued to generate and interpret “findings” in ways that (re)confirmed an acknowledged truth of the world: racial hierarchies are real, and because they are real, humanity behaves in this way.
Thus, theories born during the latter part of the 19th century illustrate how real, diametrically-opposing contradictions in the science of hereditary intelligence did not deter scientists from their truth of the world. When recapitulation was all the rage, “the European or white race stands at the head of the list, the African or negro at its foot” (145). When neoteny comes into vogue, “the white race appears to be the most progressive” (150). Without any larger theory to challenge the grand idea of racial hierarchy, all lesser theories maintain their role in affirming racial hierarchy.
In Lombroso’s theory of innate criminality and its hereditary origins, crime now makes sense. Criminals are driven to act “as a normal ape or savage would,” and while they are not to be blamed, they must still be identified (153). Luckily, since these criminal stigmata are identifiable on the body, apishness can not only be classified, but contained by a vigilant and civilized society.
In the case of Lombroso’s taxonomy of criminal features, societies are not only given justification for how to treat racial groups, they are given a map of measurable traits by which criminality can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. Evidence is no longer limited to one’s race, but has been extended to the size of one’s jaw, the length of one’s arms, and the size of one’s ears.
Again, the convenience of the solution—to place the blame for society’s biased behaviors upon its victims—is a neat trick that satisfies reason by confirming preexisting bias rather than challenging its source and attempting to find answers beyond one’s understanding of the world. And while the act of theorizing criminality is harmless in and of itself, its consequences in the world are great and far reaching. For example, racist societies are now equipped with a rationale to assign prison terms—under Lombroso’s perspective, prison is not a tool to exact retribution for crime, but a means to protect society from those who will commit acts of crime. Under this theory, certain groups merely need regulating, and in this, we can trace the translucent but durable threads of contemporary police profiling back through time.
