Phrenology as a Science or a Circus Act

Phrenology is depicted a science involving a bond or balance between an individuals personality and that of the morphology of the skull. The origin of this science though, is not a newly sprung method but perhaps a lived method, dating back to Aristotle of ancient Greece, who was the first philosopher to locate mental abilities transcribed in the brain and also to attempt to pinpoint and detect faculties of personality within the head. Perhaps the real Father, or initiator of phrenology though could be related to Franz Joseph Gall, who was one of the very first researchers to actually hold the belief of the brain as a direct basis of all mental activity. He also was denoted as holding the first attempts to scientifically measure the skull shape, and it's purported relation to character. Gall developed thorough and precise observations and experimentations that led him to a view that there were fixed correlations between attributes of character called faculties, and their direct line to organs in the brain. The term phrenology then took on it's meaning and populated as Gall intended, as it stemmed from the Greek word phrenos which meant brain and logy which meant study of. A contemporary of Gall, Johann Spurzheim, assisted Gall's revised theory of personality, by revealing thirty-five different mental faculties and concluding the location in the brain that linked to each one. Each of these traits were alleged to lead to an individual behavior; the propensity regarding that behavior could be accessed by assessing the bumps and grooves on a person's skull (Cherry, 2011).

Phrenologists, held onto their prediction that there was a definite relationship between the mind and personality that steamed from that, as phrenologists proceeded to find ways to detect the meaning of the lumps position based upon the people that exhibited these lumps. These scientists ran their palms over their patients feeling for enlargements or indentions and then assessing with this information the character and temperament of the patient based upon the brain organ. Gall would even go to mental hospitals and jails in order to assess the lumps and the relationship on their disease or temperament based on these twenty-seven organs and lump positions; all the while trying to create a "brain map" that could be used as a template to predict a child's future, or match a couple to successful marriage partners. Gall and other phrenologists held to this brain map as a revolution to finally understanding and predicting relationships by the specific lists corresponding to the organs (Vukin, 4/2).

When phrenology was first proposed there was a great amount of controversy that followed in its footsteps in the aspects of the influence it played on religion. The Roman Catholic Church grew in uproar over Gall's suggestion of phrenology and the materialistic and atheistic view the church believed he pressed by adapting this ideology. This uproar caused Roman Catholics to pressure the Austrian government, with hope of preventing Gall from lecturing, but instead of ceasing this movement turned the contrary by creating an increase in the appeal of phrenology. Gall had successors that took his work of phrenology to even farther measures, and while Gall believed heredity was the line between one's strengths and weaknesses, his succeeding colleagues, the Fowler brothers, later targeted phrenology as a way in which people could improve themselves; to the church's delight, this minimized the scientific aspects of their field. This though, only caused scientists and philosophers to dismiss the ideas of phrenology deeming that there were biased observations; during the popularity height of phrenology, characterizing phrenology as a "disciple dressed up to look like science" (Cherry, 2011).

Even in its newly formed existence, negative praise from the church and scientists did not slow down the impact phrenology would have later on the brain and behavior relationship. Gall proposed with phrenology, that the ridges that outlined the corresponding area of the brain could be a determinant of personality traits, scientists concluded later that the skull was an inaccurate predictor, but this ideology sprouted a rise to neurological advances. A scientific advancement that steamed from phrenology, involved the knowledge phrenologists acquired explaining the difference between the left and right brain. Where as the right brain attributed to more creative tasks and said to be more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective the left brain was logical, analytical