Assignment #1

Phrenology was an interesting concept to me when I first read about it, the whole idea that simply feeling the bumps on a persons head to tell what kind of person they are seemed entirely ludicrous. I wanted to see how this pseudoscience had originally developed and how it was perceived.
Phrenology is the study of the conformation of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character (Mirriam-Webster). And in modern psychology, it is an example of pseudoscience.
German physician Franz Joseph Gall developed phrenology in the year 1796. It was originally named 'cranioscopy' but later changed to phrenology. In Gall's book, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, he wrote the following statement as one of the principles of his doctrine for phrenology: "That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative development of the brain organs."
Phrenology works by feeling the bumps on one's head and from those bumps, determining his characteristics. Gall believed that there were 27 of these areas in the brain that composed a person's personality. Phrenologists would measure the subject's head and would feel for bumps or enlargements and using those distortions, use a phrenology map to see what their personality was composed of. (image: http://www.phrenology.org/vic.gif)
Phrenology was popular in the nineteenth century in the Victorian era in Europe, as well as a valid science that was implemented in society. It was also popular in the United States, where a phrenology machine was developed that would read the skull by a machine instead of a person feeling the bumps. This machine can actually be seen in Minnesota's very own science museum. However, phrenology soon became nothing more than a parlor trick, as it was never accepted by renowned psychologists and con-men used it to gain money.
Today, phrenology is considered pseudoscience because it makes broad observations that don't allow for exactness and scientists have researched and found that the external appearance of the skull seems to have no correlation to the internal characteristics of the brain.