Biological Positivism Essay

The biological positivism theory emerged in the late 19th century and marked a shift in the way that society looks at criminals. Prior to its conception, the criminal justice system was based on the classical theory which stated that, because everyone has free will, individuals who commit crime make a rational choice to do so (Bradley & Walters, 2011). Biological positivism was founded in an attempt to answer the question: “What makes a person choose to commit crime?”, something that classicism wasn’t interested in addressing. For this reason, biological positivism, in contrast to classicism, puts its focus on the criminal, not the crime. With the integration of the medical model into criminology that biological positivism brought, criminality…

Criminological Positivism was a school of thought which emerged and gathered momentum in the 19th century, during a period of major technological developments and growing appreciation of the importance of science and scientific understanding (Haines and White, 1996). Within the historical context, the positivist movement arose in challenge to existing ideologies (such as the polar opposite: Classicism) and as a result has been referred to as a revolution or revolt against traditional concepts of…

Biological Positivism has both its strengths and weaknesses, it changed the way of criminological ideas and opened up new theories that were based on scientific facts rather than philosophical ideas like in Classicism.…

Other critiques offered were due to weak methodologies and there was very little empirical support. A main focus of critics tends to be that natural scientific methods are inappropriate when applied in the human or social science arena. Compare & Contrast: The comparative traits among the classical and biological positivism theories are that human behavior is implicated as being responsible for why we commit crime, and that crime is able to be deterred. Contrasting traits between these two…

country scarred and mourning: Dylann Roof. Last year, nine African American parishioners were shot and killed by Roof during a Bible study at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. When such unbelievable and horrific crimes occur, we are left to pick up the pieces, trying to find some sort of comfort in a rational explanation with tangible evidence. This paper will discuss the Roof case through the lens of a positivist criminologist by exploring empiricism, individual pathology, biological and…

For example, if a researcher acquire an epistemological speculation accordant with post-positivism, then it is important for techniques with features that are authoritarian used to diminish the influence of a researcher. Such as member examine or inter coder agreement. However if the researcher assume a constructivist paradigm and highlight co-construction of recognition, then techniques focus at eliminate the research from the findings have a poor epistemological position (Denzin & Lincoln,…

posting of selfies on social media. A positivist approach uses quantitative analysis to examine media and is focused on finding correlations between the variables of study. Positivism also possesses certainty as it deals with statistics and data. Positivist studies also have results that can be reproduced by others (Weber, 2004). Wickel (2015) used a 12-item survey as a method of collecting data, the questions helped determine whether selfies posting was a narcissistic act. This study’s research…

FORREST GUMP: THE USE OF HIS SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION The sociological imagination is the very foundation of the science of sociology and the understanding of the sociological aspects of the world around us. Forrest Gump is a perfect example of someone using their sociological imagination. The movie is based on Forrest telling strangers stories about his life. They were simple stories to him, but the movie viewers got a deeper look into his impact on society from the 1940s to the 1980s. Forrest…

The article International Interventions to Build Social Capital: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Sudan, written by Alexandra Avdeenko and Michael Gilligan, analyse community driven development (CDD) programs conducted in the post-civil war Sudanese communities. This analysis provides an interesting and relevant analysis of the effects of CDD programs, and more broadly, the effects of developmental aid in areas that have been devastated by civil war. It is important for this type of research…

The complexity that exists in today’s society and the impact felt by globalization and the evolution of intellectual property law of moved well passed it’s original legal intention. Multidisciplinary approaches allow for a continued isolationist approach through positivism, interdisciplinary approaches, while filling gaps existent between disciplines, still fall short of addressing the complex nature of IP. It is only in a transdisciplinary approach that we find a holistic measure of the impacts…