A antropometria é um método estatístico de análise do corpo humano criado por volta de 1850 para precisar o lugar do homem na natureza e definir os caracteres das raças humanas. Ela foi rapidamente utilizada para apreciar os fatores "biossociológi-cos" na origem da decadência ou da prosperidade das nações e discriminar os grupos sociais desviantes, criminais ou inadaptados. Os antropólogos esperavam manifestar assim sua competência especializada. Consideravam-se os únicos capazes de formular os verdadeiros fins da humanidade e os meios de apressar seus progressos. Esta ideologia profissional corrente foi criticada pelo anatomista Léonce Manouvrier, um adversário de Cesare Lombroso convertido à etiologia comum entre os sociólogos. Este artigo lembra os fundamentos da antropotecnia e os termos da controvérsia que opôs os teóricos da hereditariedade e do meio. Palavras-chave: Antropometria; Biossociologia; raças.
ABSTRACTAs a statistical analysis of the human body, anthropometry was created in mid ninettenth-century in order to define the human place in nature and the physical features of races. It was rapidly applied to appreciate the "biosociological" factors governing the decadence or the prosperity of nations. It was used also to distinguish criminals or "degenarates". In doing so, the anthropologists wanted to push themselves forward as social experts. They persuaded themselves to be able to formulate the real goals of humanity and the means of its progress. This commom professional ideology was examined critically by the anatomist Léonce Manouvrier, who fighted with the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso and soon accepted the environmental etiology of the sociologists. This article examines the fundamentals of "anthropotecnie" and the development of heredity vs milieu controversy at the end of the nineteenth century.
A 1'origine de la craniologie, 1' « ecole des angles », ainsi nommee par Paul Topinard 1 , approfondit pour mieux l'apprecier le rapport zoologique et anatomique de l'homme ä la nature animale. Avant 1'invention par Camper de la « ligne faciale », Louis Daubenton (1716-1800), le collaborateur de Buffon, a initie ce mouvement de longue duree en publiant, des 1764, son Memoire sur les differences de la situation du grand trou occipital dans l'homme et les animaux 2 • Daubenton cherche ä fournir un critere objectif de distinction des hommes et des quadrupedes (en particulier les grands singes) et resout par l'analyse des correlations organiques le probleme, controverse depuis Vanini 3 , de 1'etat naturel de la demarche humaine : l'homme est necessairement bipede, comme l'indique la conformation des os du bassin, des mains ou des pieds. Mais 1'etude du crane seule suffit A cette diagnose : selon les especes animales comparees, le port de la tete et donc le comportement fondamental varient parce que la colonne vertebrale s'insere en un point variable, plus ou moins posterieur, de l'os occipital. La destination quadrupede ou bipede de l'animal est, par son examen, ainsi decidee et, quant ä l'homme, la situation tout ä fait centrale du grand trou occipital, le foramen magnum, atteste sa disposition fondamentale ä la posture verticale. C'est cette posture qui
The foundation of French anthropology during the 19th century. Some historiographical perspectives.
Claude Blanckaert [31-54].
One often confounds the notion of scientific discipline with its contemporary objects as if a «great thought» preluded its emergence and accomplishment. Or modem science does not exist, from a sociological and historical point of view, without a regulatory structure nor specialized institutions. This article examines the different arguments of a functional analysis of the concept of Institution. It shows that the disciplinary construction of French anthropology began in the 1830's as a natural history of man, keeping its program until the end of the 19th century. Thence, the celebrated Durkheimian breakthrough of the beginning of the century appears like a historiographical problem rather than a practical solution of the so-called French delay.
Adherant methodologiquement au principe d'alterite du passe, principe d'emprunt issu initialement de la refIexion ethnologique, l'histoire des sciences s'efforce, selon 1'expression de Michel Foucault, de penser 1'Autre dans le temps de notre propre culture'. Par cette prise de position vis-à-vis de l'objet, eile disqualifie tous les points de vue « presentistes », toutes les interpretations du passe privilbgiant la permanence historique des enjeux de pensee en s'autorisant l'usage de jugements de valeur anachroniques. Le presentisme objective dans he
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