Another wonderful article! Lots to ponder here. First, like you say Galton was not good by our standards yet at the time he was gentle, appears to have been well intentioned and genuinely wanted to help society. We have made similar cases regarding Cartwright (claimed the desire for freedom was a disease) and Freeman (enthusiastic about lobotomy).
Fingerprinting is a really interesting story too. I recall there is an Argentine criminologist that developed a lot of the techniques to match fingerprinting to people because he thought it would help identify reoffenders. He also thought that fingerprints could be used to predict which people were more likely to commit crimes (more on this later).
The relationships between science, medicine, technology, and culture are really interesting and reveal much about society.
Thank you very much for your kind words. I really appreciate them!
You are right about Galton. Everything I've read about him seems to indicate he was one of the good guys. He gets to readily dismissed these days owing to a kind of facile presentism, whereby people from the past are judged by the standard of today. That's a rigged game which we can never lose. If you have a link to your articles on Freeman and Cartwright, I'd be delighted to read them.
Fingerprinting is an excellent story. I forget many of the details now, but you are right that Argentina was a major centre of development. Was it the first country ton jettison Bertillionage? I suspect it may have been.
There is a lot of grist for upcoming posts here...
Fascinating! Looking forward to the next instalment on this. Despite no scientific evidence pointing to a recognisable criminal typeface, I'm sure we can pull 50 people who'll swear by their definition of a criminal typeface, haha.
Thank you for reading! I’m glad you enjoyed it. You’re absolutely right that we could find any number of people who think they know what a criminal ought to look like. That’s an interesting phenomenon in itself. More on that in a few weeks, I suspect…
Another wonderful article! Lots to ponder here. First, like you say Galton was not good by our standards yet at the time he was gentle, appears to have been well intentioned and genuinely wanted to help society. We have made similar cases regarding Cartwright (claimed the desire for freedom was a disease) and Freeman (enthusiastic about lobotomy).
Fingerprinting is a really interesting story too. I recall there is an Argentine criminologist that developed a lot of the techniques to match fingerprinting to people because he thought it would help identify reoffenders. He also thought that fingerprints could be used to predict which people were more likely to commit crimes (more on this later).
The relationships between science, medicine, technology, and culture are really interesting and reveal much about society.
Thank you very much for your kind words. I really appreciate them!
You are right about Galton. Everything I've read about him seems to indicate he was one of the good guys. He gets to readily dismissed these days owing to a kind of facile presentism, whereby people from the past are judged by the standard of today. That's a rigged game which we can never lose. If you have a link to your articles on Freeman and Cartwright, I'd be delighted to read them.
Fingerprinting is an excellent story. I forget many of the details now, but you are right that Argentina was a major centre of development. Was it the first country ton jettison Bertillionage? I suspect it may have been.
There is a lot of grist for upcoming posts here...
We have two posts on Cartwright. He was discussed in some classes I took but we also read a dissertation on him and some other research.
https://curingcrime.substack.com/p/freedom-the-terrifying-and-obscure-disease-from-the-1800s-f11502f98b89?r=2bk4r1
https://curingcrime.substack.com/p/good-practices-and-good-intentions-can-also-destroy-453898aeb7ed?r=2bk4r1
Fascinating! Looking forward to the next instalment on this. Despite no scientific evidence pointing to a recognisable criminal typeface, I'm sure we can pull 50 people who'll swear by their definition of a criminal typeface, haha.
Thank you for reading! I’m glad you enjoyed it. You’re absolutely right that we could find any number of people who think they know what a criminal ought to look like. That’s an interesting phenomenon in itself. More on that in a few weeks, I suspect…