To compare the physical characteristics of "criminals" and "noncriminals," biological positivism accepted the state's definition of crime as a violation of law and of the criminal as someone arrested, convicted, and sentenced for a crime. Acceptance of the state's definition of crime, science's presumed view of causation, and the substantive variables assigned to it by the disciplinary division of labor did not lead biological positivism to a concept of crime. On the contrary, this led it to search for the biological causes of state-defined crime. Consequently, biological positivism has produced little in the way of meaningful or interpretable research. Instead, it has produced a series of "findings" (e.g., physiognomy, feeblemindedness, XYY, inheritance of criminality) that survived only so long as necessary to subject them to replication or to straightforward critical analysis. 4 tables, 1 figure, 3 notes, and 23 references