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Phrenology Quotes

Browse 22 quotes about Phrenology.

Phrenology Quotes

“G. Stanley Hall, a creature of his times, believed strongly that adolescence was determined – a fixed feature of human development that could be explained and accounted for in scientific fashion. To make his case, he relied on Haeckel's faulty recapitulation idea, Lombroso's faulty phrenology-inspired theories of crime, a plethora of anecdotes and one-sided interpretations of data. Given the issues, theories, standards and data-handling methods of his day, he did a superb job. But when you take away the shoddy theories, put the anecdotes in their place, and look for alternate explanations of the data, the bronze statue tumbles hard. I have no doubt that many of the street teens of Hall's time were suffering or insufferable, but it's a serious mistake to develop a timeless, universal theory of human nature around the peculiarities of the people of one's own time and place.”

ChildrenReasonScienceSufferingPovertyHistoryPsychologySocietyHuman NatureYouthTheoryLogicStressMathematicsImmigrationParentsDataRebellionChildTeensAdolescenceTeenageTeenagersPsychologistTurmoilScientific MethodAnecdotesYouthfulnessFreudYouth CultureData AnalysisPhrenologyYouthful Arrogance
Book:Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence
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“Will those insights be tested,or simply used to justify the status quo and reinforce prejudices? When I consider the sloppy and self-serving ways that companies use data, I'm often reminded of phrenology, a pseudoscience that was briefly the rage in the nineteenth century. Phrenologists would run their fingers over the patient's skull, probing for bumps and indentations. Each one, they thought, was linked to personality traits that existed in twenty-seven regions of the brain. Usually the conclusion of the phrenologist jibed with the observations he made. If the patient was morbidly anxious or suffering from alcoholism, the skull probe would usually find bumps and dips that correlated with that observation - which, in turn, bolstered faith in the science of phrenology. Phrenology was a model that relied on pseudoscientific nonsense to make authoritative pronouncements, and for decades it went untested. Big Data can fall into the same trap. Models like the ones that red-lighted Kyle Behm and black-balled foreign medical students and St. George's can lock people out, even when the "science" inside them is little more than a bundle of untested assumptions.”

ScienceFairnessPseudosciencePhrenologyBig DataFeedback Loop
Book:Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
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“When, therefore, a man is told, “You (your inner being) are so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted,” this means nothing else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement with a box on the ear — in the way mentioned above when dealing with psysiognomy — removes primarily the “soft” parts of his head from their apparent dignity and position, and proves merely that these are no true inherent nature, are not the reality of mind; the retort here would, properly speaking, have to go the length of breaking the skull of the person who makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to him in a manner as palpable as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reality.”

PhysiognomyPhrenologyRetort
Book:The Phenomenology of Mind, Vol 1
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“Retrophrenology: It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone's character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore - according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind - it should be possible to mould someone's character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that's the main thing.”

PsychologyHumourPratchettPhrenology
Book:Men at Arms
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“See, phrenology is this old Victorian science, which claimed you could determine the dominant traits of a man's personality by studying the bumps on his head. The size and position of these bumps indicated different personality traits. See? Now, /retro-phrenology/ says, why not change a man's personality by hitting him on the head with a hammer, till you raise just the right bumps in the right places!" "One of us needs a lot more drinks," said Alex. "That's starting to make sense.”

HumorJohnPhrenologyTaylorNightside
Book:Something from the Nightside
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“Fowler's philosophy [of phrenology] is all about the possibility and real hope of change. Calvinistic predestination and hellfire are swept away in an instant; if the brain and its resultant behavior is malleable throughout one's life, then nobody is fated to remain bad: they can mend their ways and their selves... Bad actions became the correctable result of improper development, rather than machinations of some cloven-footed prat with a fiery pitchfork. What Fowler holds out is nothung less than the promise of redemption. Will it surprise you at all when, at long last, Fowler tears aside his scientific raiments, and reveals what he has been all along: a minister leading his flock heavenward? "[Let us] redouble our efforts for... that high and holy destiny hereafter as such by this great principle of ILLIMITABLE PROGRESSION!" Indeed. Look carefully around this empty plaza: what you see is nothing less than the birthplace of American progressivisim.”

American HistoryPseudoscienceCalvinismProgressivismPhrenologyOrson Fowler
Book:The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine
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“A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.”

BookLiteratureCasesStudyWonderfulTheoryMajorsRacismImportanceHistoricalDataFascinatingLogicalMotivatedMisuseInconsistencyTracingPhrenologyRecapitulation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.”

PersonsHas BeensReadingPracticeOur LivesMovementPlanetsSeriousNotionTeaAstrologyAlchemyGoatsPhonyPseudoscienceCarnivalsMidwaySawdustNumerologySerious PersonPhrenologyTea LeavesPalmistryBlarney
Author:James J. Kilpatrick
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“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”

MindAmericaHateHopeEconomyLearningStudyRichSkillsI HateTablesCreditRapMasteryShallowMidnightGet RichApprenticeshipAmericanismPhrenology
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)
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“[Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!”

KnowsTryingHumansPlayFactsScienceGamesPrinciplesGenerationsHorseSpeciesConclusionFollyInfidelitySpontaneousSoberGrossUnnaturalBreedingGeologyRoguesTastingCredulityUnlawfulVarianceProgenyTransmutationPhrenologyHuman FollySinkholes
Author:Adam Sedgwick
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“The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City's Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch.”

HumansStoriesEyeCitiesBrainWatchesRichWonderfulGenerationsSubjectsNew YorkStrangeDoctorsDetailsCuresNarrativeTherapyProseRemarkableNew York CityTwelveIntroducingGiftedElegantVansDiagnosisDebutMaladyOlafMisadventurePhrenologyEye For Detail
Author:Ben Fountain
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“Phrenology taught us that the mind thinks by means of the brain, is liable to become fatigued by too long attention, as the locomotive muscles are by too much walking; and I therefore proposed to them to take a brief rest.”

ThinkingMindMeanLongAttentionBrainToo MuchTaughtWalkingMusclesLiableTaught UsLocomotivesPhrenology
Book:Notes on the United States of North America During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-39-40
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