Transcript Physical features directly related to personality and metal processes

Physiognomy
Physical features directly related to
personality and metal processes
Franz Joseph Gall
• That moral and intellectual faculties are innate
• That their exercise or manifestation depends on
organization
• That the brain is the organ of all the propensities,
sentiments and faculties
• That the brain is composed of as many particular
organs as there are propensities, sentiments and
faculties which differ essentially from each other.
• That the form of the head or cranium represents
the form of the brain, and thus reflects the
relative development of the brain organs.
He was a pioneer in the study of the localization of
mental functions in the brain. Around 1800, he
developed "cranioscopy", a method to divine the
personality and development of mental and moral
faculties on the basis of the external shape of the skull.
Claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the surface of
the brain which affect the contour of the skull,
including a "murder organ" present in murderers.
Brain organs that were used got bigger and those which
were not used shrunk, causing the skull to rise and fall
with organ development.
Gall's early work was with criminals and the insane and
his brain "organs" reflected this interest.
Phrenology
- phrenological theories best accepted in England, where ruling class
used it to justify the inferiority of colonial subjects.
- popular in the United States from 1820 to 1850
Debunking
•In 1808, the Institute of France
assembled a committee of savants.
- declared phrenology was not to be
trusted (may not have had scientific
evidence)
Napoleon Bonaparte was furious
because Gall's interpretation of his
skull "missed" some noble qualities
he thought he had.
Anthropometry
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, used mainly to classify
potential criminals by facial characteristics.
Cesare Lombroso "Criminal Anthropology" 1895,
associated certain craniofacial features to criminal types.
(e.g., murderers have prominent jaws, and that
pickpockets have long hands and scanty beards).
Popular among the police and judicial systems in Italy and
in many other countries.
Well until the 30s, many judges ordered "lombrosian"
anthropometric analyses of defendants in criminal charges,
which were used against them by the prosecution in the
trial procedures.
Craniology
Influential during the Victorian era,
Used by the British to justify racism and dominance of "inferior people", such as
the Irish and the black tribes of Africa.
"Inferior" races were said to be similar to apes and monkeys, so that they were
considered to be more kin to these animals than the main European people (such
as the Anglo-Saxon, of course...).
Jonh Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute,
The Races of Man" (1862), developed "Index of Nigressence", stated that the Irish
had crania similar to those of the Cro-Magnon pre-historic men and thus were a
kind of "Africanoid" white race !
Bumps(1932)
National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the
Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on
Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the
"scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians
Official craniometric certification required by law
“Many persons were sent to the death camps or denied
marriage or work as a result of this "mismeasurement“.
Stephen Jay Gould
Popularity in US
1838 - 1911
Quack Quack!!
• Phrenology gave rise to the invention of the
psychograph by Lavery and White, a machine
which could do a phrenological reading complete
with printout. It is said that this device netted its
owners about $200,000 at the 1934 Century of
Progress Exposition in Chicago.
Localization of Function
As it turns out, Gall and the phrenologists were
correct when it came to the central debate of
neurology of the time.
The brain is compartmentalized, with each piece
serving a specific function modern map is based on
fundamental functions, such as Broca’s and
Werinike’s Areas.
Franz Anton Mesmer
Early Studies of the Central
Nervous System
Stephen Hales (1677–1761)
English Botanist
Worked with frogs.
Hales showed that some reflexes are mediated by the spinal
cord.
Hales studied stones taken from the bladder and kidneys and suggested
solvents which might reduce them without surgery.
He also invented the surgical forceps.
Luigi Galvani~ 1780
Luigi Galvani touched the nerves of a frog's spinal cord with metal
electrodes which caused contractions of the leg muscles.
Galvanic Skin Response named after him, but not invented by him.
Charles Bell - 1823
Scottish surgeon-anatomist
published "Essays on the
of Expression in
Painting"
Anatomy
Nerves of the senses could be traced from specific areas of the brain to
their end organs.
Germany – birthplace of Psychology
1815 – 1871 – federation of 38 principalities.
Wissenschaft – philosophy of education
•
encouraged research, teaching
•
academic freedom
•
students wandered from university to university
•
degrees involved sitting examinations or writing of thesis.
Methods from Physiology
•
Development of measurement instruments
•
Replication of results
•
Public data and academic debate
•
Experimental methods
Johannes Peter Müller
1840 – further developed Bell’s research .
The doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies
- Nervous stimulation is the link between the physical world and our
psychological experience of it.
- For example, the visual nerves, however they may be stimulated, are
only capable of transmitting visual data.
Mechanistic View of Human Behavior
Müller – proposed that there was in addition to physical and chemical
properties of the physiological system, there was also a “Vital Force”
that could not be reduced further. (Vitalism)
Mechanistic View – vitalism is a myth. All living organisms can be
reduced to physical, chemical and mechanical principles. (Müller’s
Students, Helmhotz).
Emil Du Bois-Reymond - 1850
Developed very sensitive galvonometer.
Was able to measure the role of electrical impulses in neural
conductance
“No force other than the common physical chemical ones are active
within the organism.”
Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz
Physicist
Speed of neural conductance.
(90 feet per second)
Established Reaction Time
As a measure of
Psychological Processing.
More Helmholtz …
Invented ophthalmoscope – for examining retina.
Trichromatic theory of Color Vision
Opponent Process Theory
Herring
Charles Wheatstone (1833)
Psychophysics
Ernst Weber – two point threshold.
Weber’s LAW
Thresholds – just noticeable differences.
How much does a stimulus need to change before it
can be detected. JND/S = k
-Studied the relationship between the physical and the
psychological.
Gustav Fechner
Studies on afterimages led to blindness.
- became an invalid, depression.
Recovered vision by “taking control over his life”.
Mind-Body Controversy
In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts
this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead,
dreary "night view" of materialism.
JND depends on the intensity of the
standard
Weber’s Law
I/I = k
Change in Intensity divided by Intensity of
the standard is a constant.
Not “Absolute” but it is predictable.