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Professor Phineas Crowne was born in Toronto Canadawith a peculiar purple protrusion on his forehead. This curious anomaly sometimes impedes and sometimes accelerates Phineas' emotional and physical development and his navigation through the stages of life. From birth to death Phineas' must contend with his peculiarity and with excruciating headaches that worsen as he ages. Despite his infamous bulge Crowne's rare intelligence catapults him into the world of pseudo medicine. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, while studying under the tutelage of renowned phrenologist Orson Fowler, Phineas Crowne begins what becomes an amazing career in the city of his birth. Through “The Phrenologist” the author enlightens the reader on this lost science by paralleling the thirty seven bumps of the skull with the drama of Phineas' life. The abnormal growth remains a mystery until at the conclusion of the captivating tale the author reveals the shocking truth of the BUMP.
A proposal for a fully post-phrenological neuroscience that details the evolutionary roots of functional diversity in brain regions and networks. The computer analogy of the mind has been as widely adopted in contemporary cognitive neuroscience as was the analogy of the brain as a collection of organs in phrenology. Just as the phrenologist would insist that each organ must have its particular function, so contemporary cognitive neuroscience is committed to the notion that each brain region must have its fundamental computation. In After Phrenology, Michael Anderson argues that to achieve a fully post-phrenological science of the brain, we need to reassess this commitment and devise an alternate, neuroscientifically grounded taxonomy of mental function. Anderson contends that the cognitive roles played by each region of the brain are highly various, reflecting different neural partnerships established under different circumstances. He proposes quantifying the functional properties of neural assemblies in terms of their dispositional tendencies rather than their computational or information-processing operations. Exploring larger-scale issues, and drawing on evidence from embodied cognition, Anderson develops a picture of thinking rooted in the exploitation and extension of our early-evolving capacity for iterated interaction with the world. He argues that the multidimensional approach to the brain he describes offers a much better fit for these findings, and a more promising road toward a unified science of minded organisms.
During the 1790s in Vienna, German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) came forth with a new doctrine dealing with mind, brain and behavior—one that could account for individual differences. He maintained that there are many independent faculties of mind, each associated with a separate part of the brain. He fine-tuned his ideas and published two sets of books presenting them after he and his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, settled in Paris in 1807. Gall's ideas had many supporters but were controversial and unsettling to others. In particular, the opposition ridiculed his belief that skull features reflect the growth of specific, underlying cortical organs, and hence correlate with personality traits (i.e., his ‘bumpology’). Gall’s fundamental ideas about the mind and organization of the brain were debated across the globe, and they also began to be exploited by unscrupulous businessmen, ‘professors’ who ‘read skulls’ for a living. But, as some historians have shown, his ideas about mind, brain and behavior led to the modern neurosciences. The chapters collected in this volume provide new insights into Gall’s thinking and what Spurzheim did, and the faddish movement called ‘phrenology’, which originated as a science of humankind but became a popular source of entertainment. All chapters were originally published in various issues of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.
"The purpose of this book is to acquaint all with the elements of human nature and enable them to read these elements in all men, women and children in all countries"--Preface.