Was Phrenology a Reform Science? Towards a New Generalization for Phrenology

Cooter Roger , “The conservatism of ‘pseudoscience’”, in Grim Patrick (ed.), Philosophy of science and the occult (New York, 1982), 130–43, pp. 130–1.

Ibid., 130. See also: Cooter Roger , “Deploying ‘pseudoscience’: Then and now”, in Hanen M. Osler M. Weyant R. G. (eds), Science, pseudoscience and society (Waterloo, Ont., 1980), 237–72.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 2); Cooter Roger , “Phrenology and British alienists, c. 1825–1845”, Medical history, xx (1976), 1–21, 135–51, reprinted in Scull Andrew (ed.), Madhouses, mad-doctors, and madmen: The social history of psychiatry in the Victorian era (Philadelphia, 1981), 58–109; idem, “Phrenology: The provocation of progress”, History of science, xiv (1976), 211–34; idem, op. cit. (ref. 1); idem, “The politics of brain: Phrenology in Birmingham”, Society for the Social History of Medicine bulletin, no. 32 (1983), 34–36; idem, Phrenology in the British Isles: An annotated, historical bibliography and index (Metuchen, N.J., and London, 1989); idem, The cultural meaning of popular science: Phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1984); Young R. M. , Mind, brain and adaptation in the nineteenth century: Cerebral localization and its biological context from Gall to Ferrier (Oxford, 1970, 1990); Shapin Steven , “Homo phrenologicus: Anthropological perspectives on an historical problem”, in Barnes B. S. Shapin Steven (eds), Natural order: Historical studies of scientific culture (Beverly Hills, 1979), 41–71; idem, “Phrenological knowledge and the social structure of early nineteenth-century Edinburgh”, Annals of science, xxxii (1975), 219–43; idem, “The politics of observation: Cerebral anatomy and social interests in the Edinburgh phrenology disputes”, in On the margins of science: The social construction of rejected knowledge (Sociological Review Monograph, 27; University of Keele, 1979), 139–78; de Giustino David , “Reforming the commonwealth of thieves: British phrenologists and Australia”, Victorian studies, xv (1972), 439–62; idem, Conquest of mind: Phrenology and Victorian social thought (Totowa, 1975); Parssinen T. , “Popular science and society: The phrenology movement in early Victorian Britain”, Journal of social history, viii (1974), 1–20; McLaren Angus , “Phrenology: Medium and message”, Journal of modern history, xlvi (1974), 86–97; Inkster Ian , “Culture, insititutions and urbanity: The itinerant science lecturer in Sheffield 1790–1850”, in Pollard S. Holmes C. (eds), Essays in the economic and social history of South Yorkshire (Sheffield, 1976), 218–32.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1976), 66. Cooter's approach has been critiqued in Stack David , “William Lovett and the National Association for the Political and Social Improvement of the People”, The historical journal, xlii (1999), 1027–50.

Morrell J. Thackray A. , Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), 278.

Young R. M. , Darwin's metaphor: Nature's place in Victorian culture (Cambridge, 1985), 69.

Stepan Nancy , The idea of race in science: Great Britain 1800–1960 (London, 1982), 20; Burke James , The day the universe changed (London, 1985), 320.

Desmond Adrian , The politics of evolution: Morphology, medicine, and reform in radical London (London, 1989), 174.

Winter Alison , “Orthodoxies and heterodoxies in the life sciences”, in Lightman Bernard (ed.), Victorian science in context (Chicago and London, 1997), 24–50, p. 31. Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1984), 317, notes 16 and 17, provides a list of seventeen members of Royal Societies and academics who were also firm phrenologists at one time or another; Cantor G. , “A critique of Shapin's social interpretation of the Edinburgh phrenology debate”, Annals of science, xxxiii (1975), 245–56, p. 248 lists further exceptions to the generalization, viz. “Hon. D. Gordon Hallyburton, or W. C. Trevelyan (son of Sir John Trevelyan, fifth Baronet)”; to this could be added John Fletcher (1791–1836), MD, FRCS Edin., and Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster (1789–1860), Fellow of the Linnean Society, London, FRAS, etc.

[Henry Wintle,] “On the advantages of phrenology”, Gentleman's magazine, 1824, 301–3. See Wintle , A general judgement (Oxford, 1818), and [ Wintle Henry ], “Danger of mistaken liberality”, Gentleman's magazine, 1824, 399–400.

The first ten volumes of the Phrenological journal in the Cambridge University Library are from Whewell's personal library. He was introduced to the science by his friend Thomas Forster but was probably never a firm believer.

Exceptions are Stern Madeleine , Phrenological Fowlers (Norman, 1971); Davies John , Phrenology: Fad and science (New Haven, 1955), esp. p. 33. When dealing with American phrenology, which had very little high-brow phrenology to speak of, histories of the subject are likely to focus more directly on the practical phrenologists.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1989), p. ix.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1989).

Desmond , op. cit. (ref. 8), 174. See also Desmond Adrian Moore James , Darwin (London, 1992): “Phrenology was a fashionable anti-establishment science among Edinburgh's traders, pressing for more political power”, p. 32.

See van Wyhe John , “The authority of human nature: The Schädellehre of Franz Joseph Gall”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxv (2002), 17–42.

Watson H. C. , Statistics of phrenology: Being a sketch of the progress and present state of that science in the British Islands (London, 1836), 5.

Hollander Bernard , Scientific phrenology: Being a practical mental science and guide to human character, an illustrated text-book (London, 1902), 303.

Quoted in Young , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1990), 44.

On the ubiquity of status and authority seeking see Brown Donald , Human universals (New York and London, 1991).

Henry John , The scientific revolution and the origins of modern science (London, 1997), 56. See also ibid., 4, 58.

Shapin Steven , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago and London, 1994), 16.

Dear Peter , Revolutionizing the sciences: European knowledge and its ambitions, 1500–1700 (London, 2001), 82.

Ibid., 83.

Moore James , “Theodicy and society: The crisis of the intelligentsia”, in Lightman Bernard Turner Frank (eds), Victorian faith in crisis: Essays on continuity and change in nineteenth-century religious belief (Basingstoke, 1990), 153–86, p. 172.

Desmond Adrian , “Redefining the X axis: ‘Professionals’, ‘amateurs’, and the making of mid-Victorian biology. A progress report”. Journal of the history of biology, xxxiv (2001), 3–50, p. 12. See also Barton Ruth , “An influential set of chaps: The X-Club and Royal Society politics 1864–85”, The British journal for the history of science, xxiii (1990), 53–81.

Hull David , Science as a process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science (Chicago, 1988); idem, Science and selection: Essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science (Cambridge, 2001).

Winter Alison , Mesmerized: Powers of mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago, 1998).

Anon, “Introductory statement”, Phrenological journal, 1823, pp. iii–xxxi, p. xxi; see also p. 94.

Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester model”, American historical review, lxxix (1974), 672–709; these figures from The yearbook of scientific and learned societies of Great Britain and Ireland, 1844.

See Combe George , System of phrenology (Edinburgh, 1825), or idem, Elements of phrenology (Edinburgh, 1824).

Barrow Logie , Independent spirits (London, 1986), 159, argues that there is no necessary relationship between democratic epistemology and empiricist method.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1984), 72.

Shapin , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1979), 146.

Shapin , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1975).

van Wyhe , op. cit. (ref. 16). See Hollander , op. cit. (ref. 18), 293, 298.

Combe George , Outlines of phrenology (Edinburgh, 1824), 25.

Roget Peter Mark , “Cranioscopy”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Supplement to the 4th, 5th, and 6th edns (1824), iii, 419–37 (republished as Roget , Treatises on physiology and phrenology, i (Edinburgh, 1838)); and 7th edn (1842) (as “Phrenology”), xvii, 454–73.

Ibid., 85. Replied to in [Watson], “Phrenology and the Encyclopaedia Britannica; or the deliberate obstruction of truth”, Phrenological journal, xii (1839), 278–82; reprinted as Watson H. C. , Strictures on anti-phrenology, in two letters to Macvey Napier, Esq. and M. Roget, M.D.: Being an exposure of the article called “Phrenology,” recently published in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (London, 1838).

de Giustino , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1975).

Gall F. J. to Gall F. J. , 3 March 1806, transl. and reprinted in “Correspondence of Dr. Gall”, Phrenological journal, xix (1846), 36–42, p. 40.

Gall F. J. , On the functions of the brain and of each of its parts: With observations on the possibility of determining the instincts, propensities, and talents, or the moral and intellectual dispositions of men and animals, by the configuration of the brain and head, transl. by Lewis Winslow Jr (6 vols, Boston, 1835), i, 59. See also Fossati G. A. L. , “Gall”, Nouvelle biographie générale, xix (Paris, 1857), 271–83, p. 275.

van Wyhe , op. cit. (ref. 16).

L. M. [writing on 20 May 1806], De Ster, xxxviii (issue of 6 June 1806).

van Wyhe , op. cit. (ref. 16).

Neuburger Max , “Briefe Galls an Andreas und Nannette Streicher”, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, x (1917), 3–70.

Spurzheim J. G. , The physiognomical system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim (London, 1815), 1; and idem, Outlines of the physiognomical system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim (London, 1815), 16.

Spurzheim , op. cit. (ref. 48, 1815a), 8.

Ibid., 93.

Ibid., 10.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1984), 7. See also de Giustino , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1975), 15.

See van Wyhe John , Phrenology and the origins of Victorian scientific naturalism (Aldershot, 2004).

Spurzheim , op. cit. (ref. 48, 1815a), 206.

Groß Guido , “Die Phrenologie des Dr. Johann Kaspar Spurzheim aus Longuich (1776–1832)”, Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch, xvii (1977), 35–52.

Shapin , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1979), 145.

Gall to Streicher, 7 Aug. 1826, in Neuburger , op. cit. (ref. 47), 44–45.

Spurzheim , op. cit. (ref. 48, 1815a).

Jeffrey Francis , “A system of phrenology”, Edinburgh review, xliv (issue of Sept. 1826), 253–318, p. 254. See Egerton F. , Hewett Cottrell Watson: Victorian plant ecologist and evolutionist (Aldershot, 2003).

Combe George , “Preliminary dissertation on the progress and application of phrenology”, Transactions of the Phrenological Society, 1824, 1–62; see especially pp. 26–47.

Ibid., 26.

Ibid., 38–39.

Ibid., 59.

Op. cit. (ref. 29).

Ibid., pp. xxx, xiv.

See the lengthy description in ibid., pp. x–xi.

Ibid., p. vi.

Ibid., p. v.

Ibid., p. xxxi.

Forster to Daubeny C. G. B. , 9 May 1832, quoted in Morrell Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 5), 277, emphasis in the original.

Combe George , Elements of phrenology, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1825), 203. Hilton Boyd , Age of atonement (Oxford, 1988), 195, cites an interesting passage where Combe maintains phrenology to be the proper basis of moral authority because, unlike the supernatural, a natural basis allowed certainty.

Combe George , System of phrenology, 5th edn (Edinburgh, 1853), i, 61.

Combe George , Constitution of man (Edinburgh, 1847), 57.

Combe , op. cit. (ref. 72), ii, 421.

Gregory to Lord Glenelg, 1 April 1836, quoted in Combe , op. cit. (ref. 72), i, 43–44.

Vimont Joseph , Traité de phrénologie humaine et comparé (2 vols, Paris and London, 1832–36).

Fowler L. N. , Synopsis of phrenology and physiology (Boston, 1846), 3.

Ibid., 18–19.

Fowler O. S. , The practical phrenologist, and recorder and delineator of the character and talents …: A compendium of phreno-organic science (Boston, 1869), 1.

Quoted in Stern , op. cit. (ref. 12), 38.

Weaver G. S. , Lectures on mental science according to the philosophy of phrenology. Delivered before the Anthropological Society of the Western Liberal Institute of Marietta, Ohio, in the autumn of 1851 (New York, 1852), 16, 36.

Franz S. I. , “New phrenology”, Science, xxxv (1912), 321–8, p. 323.

Cooter , op. cit. (ref. 3, 1984), 123.

Quoted ibid., 242–3.

See [Bridges,] “On the sentiment of veneration”, Phrenological journal, 1825/6, 1–26; Epps J. , Horae phrenologicae (London, 1829; 2nd edn, London, 1834); idem, “Extracts from a lecture on the organ of veneration, delivered at Windsor, May 1837”, Christian physician and anthropological magazine, ii (1837), 325–31; anon., “Phrenology inculcated in the pulpit, by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher”, Zoist, xiii (1855), 282–4.

Lundie H. , The phrenological mirror; or, Delineation book (Leeds, 1844), n.p.

Combe , op. cit. (ref. 73), 57.

Jeffrey , op. cit. (ref. 59), 254.

Desmond , op. cit. (ref. 8), 322.

Mauskopf S. H. , “Marginal science”, in Olby R. C. Cantor G. N. Christie J. R. R. Hodge M. J. S. (eds), Companion to the history of modern science (London, 1996), 869–85.

Reid , Essays on the intellectual powers of man (1785), quoted in Dixon Thomas , “From passions and affections to emotions: A case-study in Christian and scientific psychologies 1714–1903”, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1999.