Los cambios en el rol del estudiante

People in the late nineteenth century could send away to the New York firm of Fowler and Wells for a “Symbolic Head and Phrenological Map” for 10 cents.

For another $1.25, the head and map would be accompanied by a copy of How to Read Character: A New Illustrated Handbook of Phrenology and Physiognomy (Anony-mous Advertisement, 1881). Thus equipped, people would then be in a position to measure character (theirs or that of others) “scientifically” through an analysis of skull shape.

Those of us living in the early twenty-first century can visit any of dozens of websites and learn about graphology, the so-called science of analyzing personality

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by examining handwriting. At one site, for instance, for $29.95, you can buy a “Basic Steps to Graphoanalysis” kit, complete with workbook and DVD. Thus equipped, you would then be in a position to measure personality (yours or that of others)

“scientifically” through an analysis of handwriting.

As these two examples suggest, people are willing to pay for self-knowledge, especially if the methods appear to be scientific and take little effort to implement and understand. Both nineteenth-century phrenology and twenty-first-century graphology are pseudoscientific, however, and both illustrate the main features of pseudoscience: They try hard to associate with true science, they rely primarily on anecdotal and testimonial evidence, they sidestep the all-important falsifica-tion criterion, and they take complex phenomena (e.g., character, personality) and try to convince you these phenomena can be understood by relying on simple-to-understand concepts (head shape, handwriting shape).

Associates with True Science

Proponents of pseudoscience do everything they can to give the appearance of being scientific. In some cases, the origins of a pseudoscience can be found in true science; in other instances, the pseudoscience confuses its concepts with genuine scientific ones. Phrenology illustrates the former situation, graphology the latter.

Phrenology originated in legitimate attempts to demonstrate that different parts of the brain had identifiably distinct functions, and it is considered one

Figure 1.2 The unfortunate popularity of pseudoscience.

of the first systematic theories about the localization of brain function (Bakan, 1966). Phrenologists believed that (a) different personality and intellectual attri-butes (“faculties”) were associated with different parts of the brain (see Figure 1.3), (b) particularly strong faculties resulted in larger brain areas, and (c) skull measure-ments yielded estimates of the relative strengths of faculties. By measuring skulls, therefore, one could measure the faculties that made up one’s personality.

Phrenology remained popular into the early twentieth century, even though it had been discredited in a brilliant series of studies by the French physiologist Pierre Flourens by the mid-1800s (see Box 1.2). Yet in the second half of the nine-teenth century, despite being abandoned by scientists, phrenology as a business enterprise flourished; phrenological societies were formed, popular journals were established, and phrenological analysis was used for everything from choosing a career to hiring an honest servant. Even if a theory is discredited within the scien-tific community, then, it can still find favor with the public. This creates special problems for psychology as a science because it isn’t difficult for virtually any type of theory about human behavior to have some popular appeal. The graphology business is a good recent example.

As for graphology, it has an even longer history than phrenology, dating at least as far back as the seventeenth century, when an Italian physician named Camillo Baldi wrote Treatise on a Method to Recognize the Nature and Quality of a Writer from His Letters (Nickell, 1992a). Various techniques for assessing handwriting devel-oped over the years, and there are several modern versions, all having in common

Figure 1.3 A skull showing the locations of the faculties proposed by phrenologists.

©Granger Collection

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I

The entire doctrine of [phrenology] is con-tained in two fundamental propositions, of which the first is, that understanding resides exclusively in the brain, and the second, that each particular faculty of the understanding is provided in the brain with an organ proper to itself.

Now, of these two propositions, there is cer-tainly nothing new in the first one, and perhaps nothing true in the second one. (Flourens, 1846/1978, p. 18)

To test the phrenologists’ claims, Flourens took an experimental approach to the problem of localiza-tion, using the method of ablation. Rather than wait for natural experiments to occur in the form of ac-cidental brain damage, Flourens removed specific sections of the brain and observed the effects. If the result of an ablation is an inability to see, then presumably the area of the removed portion has something to do with vision.

Flourens’s attack on phrenology consisted of showing that specific areas of the brain that were alleged by phrenologists to serve one function in fact served another function, and that the cerebral cortex operated as an integrated whole rather than as a large collection of individual faculties located in specific places. One focus of his research was the cerebellum. To the phrenologists, this portion of the brain controlled sexual behavior and was the center of the faculty of “amativeness.” In his cel-ebrated Outlines of Phrenology, for instance, Johann G. Spurzheim (1832/1978) argued that sexuality

“appears with the development of this part, and is in relation to its size” (p. 28). Apparently thinking of some anecdotal data, Spurzheim pointed out that

sometimes the cerebellum “is of great magnitude in children, and then its special function, the propen-sity we treat of, appears in early life” (p. 28).

Flourens would have none of it. First, he ridiculed the circular logic of assigning “faculties” to a certain behavior and then explaining that same behavior by pointing to the faculties:

[W]hat sort of philosophy is that, that thinks to explain a fact by a word? You observe…a penchant in an animal…a taste or talent in a man; presto, a particular faculty is produced for each one of the peculiarities, and you sup-pose the whole matter to be settled. You de-ceive yourself; your faculty is only a word,—it is the name of a fact,—and all the difficulty [of explanation] remains where it was before.

(Flourens, 1846/1978, p. 39; italics original) Flourens had little trouble ruling out (falsifying) the idea that the cerebellum had anything to do with sexual motivation. By carefully removing por-tions of the cerebellum, he showed it was the center of motor coordination. Thus, pigeons deprived of the organ were unable to coordinate wing movements in order to fly, and dogs were unable to walk prop-erly and were observed staggering, falling down, and bumping into objects they could normally avoid. Sexual motivation was unaffected. With other animals, Flourens removed varying amounts of the cerebral cortex and found a general relationship between the amount destroyed and the seriousness of the ensuing problem. He could find no indication of distinct functions (“faculties”) residing in specific areas of the cortex.

Flourens effectively destroyed phrenology, but the issue of localization of function did not by any means disappear, and other physiologists soon demonstrated that the cortex had a greater degree of localization than Flourens was willing to grant. The French surgeon Paul Broca, for example, demon-strated that a relatively small area of the left frontal lobe of the cortex (later named for him), seemed to control the production of speech. For more on this issue of localization, take your department’s courses in history and systems of psychology and/or biologi-cal psychology.