Cesare Lombroso

Assessing Cesare Lombroso’s legacy in neuroscience is not a simple task. Lombroso wanted to be remembered as a scientist who had explored the deep origins of behavior, but his criminal anthropology moves beyond the history of science to wider social, political, and cultural histories. To understand his work, it is important to examine his motivation, the range of his interests, and changes in his outlook during his life. He filled hundreds of books and articles with superficial correlations, sloppy comparisons, and extraneous information. He made dangerous proposals based on overconfidence in the certainty of science. Scientific racism infused his outlook throughout his career, warping his theories, data collection, and findings interpretation. Yet he acknowledged his Jewish identity and turned his science against anti-Semitism. Near the end of his life, he acknowledged his belief in European racial superiority and advocated the wisdom of Indigenous peoples.