Positivism’s humbugs: Criminology and its cranks in progressive America

This essay explores limits of positivism by following the strange career of the American criminal anthropologist Arthur MacDonald, one the nation's most prominent exponents of the new science of crime in the positivist sense. MacDonald led an unusually well-documented life because his anthropometric experiments on "normal and abnormal man" attracted the attention of the popular press and he turned his "instruments of precision" on himself, leaving behind an exhaustive case study for scientists of the future to examine along with his body which he also donated to science. While no record of the autopsy survives, his literary remains are well-preserved in National Archives in Washington, D.C., constituting a rich quarry for the historian of crime and its scientists. Intended as "an example of one human being studied thoroughly", MacDonald's personal archive also provides a telling perspective on criminology in its formative years, adding a new dimension to origin stories and genealogies that begin with Cesare Lombroso and chronicle the developing field by reference to the university-based academic discipline and the pathologies of the carceral state. Born in upstate New York in 1856 the son of a lawyer, MacDonald took a circuitous path to discover his calling as a scientist of man. Initially drawn to the ministry, he graduated from the Union Theological Seminary more inspired by philosophy than religion, and accordingly pursued further education at Harvard University under the tutelage of William James, who introduced him to the new physiological psychology. After several years spent touring European universities to gain exposure to the latest learning in the natural sciences, MacDonald joined the faculty of Clark University in 1891 at the invitation of G. Stanley Hall, who steered him toward criminology. Yet MacDonald was at pains to distinguish his positivist project from that of the Italian school and he relinquished his academic post within a year to become the U.S. Bureau of Education's resident criminologist. His was a rocky tenure, however, owing to both personal and ideological differences with the bureau chief, William Torrey Harris, a committed philosophical idealist who was increasingly troubled by MacDonald's deterministic leanings as well as his penchant for publicity. Equipped with a "portable laboratory", this "measuring man" dramatically staged his experiments in prisons, schools, and lecture halls, rendering him vulnerable to criticism and ridicule which ultimately cost him his job. In recounting how and why he was relegated to realm of pseudoscience, this case study about case studies not only illuminates the lived experience of what philosophers of science call "the demarcation problem". It also points toward paths not taken, both with respect to the field of criminology and the writing of its history. In the final analysis, the life and work of this singular scientist provides an object lesson with contemporary implications, exemplifying the limitations of individualization as a mode of doing justice.