Phrenology examined

Phrenology

to the phenomena of the mind itself, or extended their view to existence at large, the most of them have relied exclusively upon the evidence supplied by consciousness both as regards the conditions under which knowledge is acquired and the general conclusions derived from that knowledge respecting the conditions under which things exist. This in fact has constituted a speciality of the science...

Phrenology and Character

Morphology and Behavior: Phrenology Revisited

Research conducted by evolutionary psychologists and biologists shows that subtle individual differences in body morphology can be related to surprising and important differences in human behavior and reproductive success. The authors summarize recent work on these effects as they relate to fluctuating asymmetry, facial attractiveness, finger digit morphology, sexually dimorphic differences in ...

Was phrenology a reform science? Towards a new generalization for phrenology.

In this essay I argue that the general characterization of phrenology should not be that phrenology was a reform science, as is a common view today, but that phrenology was a science of personal authority. I will show that the reform science characterization, while perfectly appropriate during some periods of phrenology’s history and for some of its advocates, is nevertheless inappropriate for ...

Functional MRI: a phrenology for the 1990's?

These are my own words, and though I would stand by them, I may well live to regret writing them. Functional MRI is touted widely, by no means solely by this author, as a method to detect regional brain activation patterns on individuals, and it reasonable to expect that enthusiastic readers might take this rather literally. In fact, however, it is only in the rare case that the validity of sin...