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• 1 2017-03-16T13:19:38-07:00 Phrenology 6 Differences in Shape and Size of the Skull to Indicate Character plain 2017-03-23T14:47:42-07:00      For the literate and, thus, the superior of the Western world, Europeans thought what they knew was fact. Sometimes what they knew was merely based on the writings and images imagined from the experiences of those who have actually seen the rest of the world. There was no need to prove the facts they claimed because the simple statement of these facts was enough. During the Age of Exploration, more images were shared of all the different phenotypic diversity of the people of the world. There was no real importance on the truth of the characteristics of someone of a different ethnic origin than those of the civilized European continent, just as long as the characterizations of these “others” were represented as factual evidence of science.
       Age of Exploration Columbus Notices the "Differences of those inhabiting the New World"
       Phrenology is the analyzing of the variance in the shapes and sizes of the skull of different races. Phrenology is craniology taken one step further to use the measurements found as implications on the personal character and mental abilities of a human being. These “scientific” approaches taken in the Enlightenment era by the ambitions of the explorative world, make the measurements of a mouth, chin, nose and forehead have a more social and outward effect than they may have as simple findings for white scientists. After these methods, society gets to act like their prejudice is backed by research.
  
   
• 1 media/racist image in LA vaught.jpg 2017-03-24T14:26:22-07:00 Repercussions of Phrenology Today 6 gallery 2017-03-24T23:07:04-07:00 Scientists were influenced for decades more to study the emotional and intellectual facets of a human based on his or her skull shape and size. For years, these ideas were applied to the European skull to measure the parts of the brain that might indicate whether a human may be of great intellectual capacity or whether he may become a criminal one day; whether a mother may be a very generous loving one or may beat and neglect her children. 
  
  Outside of the scientific sphere however, these suggestions also have very heavy implications that affect our society today. At the start of the 20th century, L.A. Vaught published the Practical Character Reader 
  for how to read the human skull's shapes and morphologies to interpret a human's character. This manual consisted of how to make phenotypic judgments, and was widely sold and influential. Today, ideas from this book stick with us in our language, body language, and idioms. We say someone is "stuck up," if they are snobby or selfish, rooted in the observations by the Fowler brothers and illustrated in the Vaught Reader. Someone is hard headed, if they are stubborn, but this came from the believe that someone with a prominent forehead could not be negotiated or reasoned with. 
  
  Today, in the 21st century, these comparisons hold stereotypical meanings that weigh on the physical features of races, of genes passed from one generation to the next based simply on where that family has lived. If a family has passed on the trait of a pointy chin, the study of phrenology persists in believing that each individual in that family with that trait lacks the value of trustworthiness. These beliefs seem so lacking in truth, because just as race and culture, someone's character and system of values depends most heavily on the environment by which they are surrounded as they develop their mind into whatever they will.