Measuring Prejudice: Race Sciences of the 18-19th Centuries

Franz Joseph Gall and pupil Johann Gaspar Spurzheim

  Influence into the late 18th- early 19th century

F. J. Gall is known as the father of what had become to be the scientific class of Phrenology. Gall began a physician studying the shapes of skulls, but laid the foundation of linking the brain to characteristics of a human's mental order. He stated in his works that the morality, sentimentality, etc. of a man were housed in the brain and organized in ways which he could decipher by studying the shape and morphology of the skull. These beliefs, or facts, to Gall, became the basic laws of Phrenology. Spurzheim, Gall's fellow collaborator and dedicated pupil, spent his years in the field studying the human skull to solidify the link between the human brain and one's character and temperament, spreading these ideas to the UK and America. 

 




 

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