BIOTYPOLOGY. – Science that studies the human individual in all his vital manifestations, in order to determine, as completely as possible, his personal biological type (biotype or individual type), clearly defined and not confusable with any other (v. INDIVIDUO). B., directed toward the deepest possible knowledge of the individual human being in all his aspects, seeks to make useful contributions to knowledge of constitutional weaknesses, morbid predispositions, and individual differences in working and educational capacities; hence its practical importance for the physician, educator, and priest.
In order to arrive at as perfect a determination as possible of the individual type, b. directs its investigation toward the anatomical structure of the human body (habitus or morphological type or constitution in the strict sense), physiological manifestations (biochemical, endocrine-humoral, kinetic, and nervous manifestations of vegetative life), and the neuropsychological activities of his relational life (development and equilibrium of emotionality, degree and practical orientation of intelligence).
Nicola Pende, who deserves particular mention among the earliest and most authoritative students of b. (he was the first to introduce this word into science), wishing to consider intelligence separately from the individual’s moral character (that is, from his affective-volitional characteristics), maintains that biotypological study must proceed along the lines of four aspects (the four faces of Pende’s biotypological pyramid): morphological (habitus), dynamic-humoral (temperament), moral (character), and intellectual (type of intelligence). Pende himself, however, points out “the great practical difficulty of defining or diagnosing a person’s character: our diagnostic judgment can only be very provisional and reserved, and must not compromise the future development of character itself” (N. Pende, Scienza moderna ecc., p. 339). On the other hand, the moral or ethical aspect of the individual, although linked to varying degrees with the features of habitus, temperament, and psychological orientation, is stimulated, constructed, and shaped by the action of the environment and the educator, by the work of self-education that each person carries out to a greater or lesser extent upon himself, and, supernaturally, by the mysterious work of Grace.
53. – CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA. – II.
That being so, it seems more correct and more fully consonant with the practical purposes that b. pursues to study, following the individual’constitution (v.) temperament (v.), in a single block, his material-immaterial neuropsychological characteristics (sensitivity and motility in relational life, the formula of emotional equilibrium, and the development and type of intelligence), which together constitute the third element or third face of the triangular block of the biotype—a face of a more distinctively mixed, material-immaterial nature (v. INDOLE), a “native state” upon which the individual’s true character (v.) must develop. This character contains too many elements extrinsic to the physical organism and too many moral, natural, and supernatural factors to remain an object of study for biotypological anthropology. The moral or ethical aspect of the individual, although indirectly and to varying degrees connected with his constitutional, humoral-functional, and neuropsychological features, is the subject of moral theology.
Giuseppe de Ninno