Tuesday, October 1, 2019
The Science and Myth behind Phrenology Essay -- Biology Essays
The Science and Myth behind Phrenology Phrenology is a phenomenon that attempts to relate oneââ¬â¢s personality and mental capabilities with the form and structure of oneââ¬â¢s skull. This ââ¬Å"scienceâ⬠became popular in the nineteenth century as the Eugenics movement gained widespread approval. In Joseph Conradââ¬â¢s Heart of Darkness, the reference to Phrenology is apparent in the scene where Marlow visits the doctor. ââ¬Å"Then with a certain eagerness [the doctor] asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprisedâ⬠¦he produced a thing like calipers. ââ¬ËI [the doctor] always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there [the African jungle].ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ ¦He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. ââ¬ËEver any madness in your family?ââ¬â¢ he asked, in a matter-of-fact tome. I felt very annoyed. ââ¬ËIs that question in the interests of science, too?ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ (Conrad 13). As it can be inferred, Marlow patronizes the doctor by implying that Phrenology is not a scientific practice because it cannot be used to determine the psychologcal ââ¬Å"fitnessâ⬠of an individual. Regardless, the spectacle of this practice in the late 1900s most likely gave Conrad the impetus to construct this parodied scene, which depicts Phrenology as a baseless science; however, the practice is not wholly baseless. The founder of Phrenology, Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall, determined the existence of a relationship ââ¬Å"between the morphology of the skull and the human characterâ⬠(Peter 1). Franz asserted that the brain is responsible for a humanââ¬â¢s mental capacities. He attempted to prove this assessment by making statementsââ¬âfound in his chief work, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and ... ...d the movement to justify their White supremacist, Aryan revolution. ââ¬Å"Fascist ideologies like Nazism have misused some elements of craniometry in the framework of their infamous racist doctrinesâ⬠(Peter 3). As a result of this misuse of Phrenology, it lost much of the scientific respect it hand gained in Western Civilization to the emerging field of psycho-analysis, whose father, Sigmund Freud, believed that the objectivity of Phrenology was limited because of its lack of introspection. Regardless of Phrenologyââ¬â¢s disgraced past, it can still be regarded as a well-founded science that has an objective groundwork for assessing the importance of ââ¬Å"self-knowledge, self-achievement, education, and human relationshipsâ⬠(Peter 4) in human development. Works Cited Peter, Van den Bosche. Phrenology. http://134.184.33.110/phreno/intro21.html. 05 October 2002.
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