As 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 "bio-sociological" 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.
Anthropometry; Bio-sociology; races