ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the biological explanations, which have a long tradition in psychology. A somewhat less mechanical view is that there are aspects of human evolutionary history that predispose people to be violent. The determinist belief that human beings were essentially biological organisms was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man. It was argued that if humans are just evolved animals, then they are no more than their bodies. The most well-known illustration of this in the nineteenth century was phrenology. Initially put forward by Franz Gall, this purported to be a science that allowed a phrenologist to determine a person's characteristics from the shape of their skull, and in particular, the protrusions on the skull. The idea that a person's appearance showed how evolved they were as human beings was drawn on by Cesare Lombroso to claim that criminals were less-evolved human beings.
