Some epistemology issues related to phrenology

Abstract

Contemporary neuroscience is nourished by the contribution of the localizationist hypothesis of phrenology (circa 1800). However, the consideration of the brain as an organ of the mind in the West has its roots in times as old as the times of Hippocrates and Herophilus. This idea resurfaces in the modern medical tradition in the figures of Thomas Sydenham, Thomas Willis, Herman Boerhaave and William Cullen, just to name the most notable, who considered the cerebral origin of behavior and madness. The specific hypothesis of phrenology is based on the premise that the brain is made up of a series of suborgans responsible for different psychological faculties or innate human qualities (such as amativity and benevolence) that as they were more present in that individual produced a protrusion in the skull that allowed a scientific analysis of these characteristics through palpation. Spurzheim was publicly ridiculed at a meeting when he was asked to analyse the skull of the famous physicist Pierre Laplace and having given him instead that of a mentally deficient man was denied. The aim of this paper is to analyze the epistemological edges of phrenology, and more specifically its characterization as a science or pseudoscience, according to the important traditions of the twen-tieth century: falsificationism (in its classical and sophisticated versions) and consensualism.Keywords: phrenology, espistemology, falsificationism, consensualism