Materials of the Mind
Materials of the Mind

Author: James Poskett

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-02-19

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0226820645

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters stretching around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world--and how the world changed phrenology. This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is the first substantial account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history could help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.

The Dome of Thought
The Dome of Thought

Author: William Hughes

Publisher:

Published: 2022-03

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781526143723

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The dome of thought is an accessible and lively history of the Victorian pseudoscience of phrenology. It makes extensive use of the popular accounts found in contemporary newspapers and journals, the majority of this material being reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century.

The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science
The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science

Author: Roger Cooter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780521227438

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study concentrates on the social and ideological functions of science during the consolidation of urban industrial society.

An Organ of Murder
An Organ of Murder

Author: Courtney E. Thompson

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2021-02-12

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1978813082

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Finalist for the 2022 Cheiron Book Prize​ An Organ of Murder explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing in particular on the influence of phrenology. In the United States, phrenology shaped the production of medico-legal knowledge around crime, the treatment of the criminal within prisons and in public discourse, and sociocultural expectations about the causes of crime. The criminal was phrenology’s ideal research and demonstration subject, and the courtroom and the prison were essential spaces for the staging of scientific expertise. In particular, phrenology constructed ways of looking as well as a language for identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in American culture, law, and medicine, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life.