When the planning committee of the 12th International Congress on Criminology assigned me the task to take the floor at the final plenary session and to speak to the audience about the global growth of criminology the members surely had in mind that I should or would concentrate on the possible ways of development of criminological theory, research, policy, and practice in the immediate future. I actually thought myself that this may be the most appropriate way to deal with the matter. Some further reflections, however, and some additional experiences I gained through the manyfold personal contacts during this Congress in Seoul, led me to another solution. I thought I should rather take the opportunity of having before me participants from so many different mental traditions and so diverse scholarly backgrounds to address a couple of historically oriented and structurally shaped remarks. These remarks aim at providing us with some understanding in what way criminological knowledge emerged out of the process of modernization in the 18th and 19th centuries, how it was and to a certain extent still is embedded in the notion of scientific progress and the hope of eventual lasting improvement of the « conditio humana », and why in the late 20st century those expectations tend to fade away.