[Hans Gross and the beginning of criminology on a scientific basis]

Modern criminology--if one wants to consider it a separate scientific discipline at all--is usually perceived as being mainly influenced by the methods of natural sciences supplemented by components from the field of psychology, which, at least in some of its conceptions, tends to define itself as a natural science, too. If we take a look at the history of science, we will see development of criminology in this direction was not necessarily inevitable. The scientific work of the Austrian Hans Gross (1847-1915), one of the founding fathers of scientific criminology, serves as an example of the way how natural sciences and their exact methods became established in the methodological apparatus of modern criminology, although in praxi his claim for the application of exact methods was all too often replaced by irrational and intuitive ways of working. Still, Hans Gross' fundamental decision for the exact methods derived from the natural sciences is an important step towards a criminology that can be understood as a part of natural sciences, largely superseding the methods of cultural sciences and anthropological philosophy. This approach made the (criminal) human being an object of measurement and can result in the concept of man as a mere phenomenon of quantity. This is, on the one hand, ethically questionable; on the other hand, it made modern criminology more efficient and successful.