In the 1800s, a German doctor by the name of Franz Joseph Gall came up with Phrenology, the theory that you could determine a person’s character and personality based solely on the shape of their head. The theory became popular across Europe with psychiatrists and neuroscientists, who used Phrenology as a means for justifying racism and misogyny in the “modern era.” Phrenologists believed the mind was an organ with each section performing a specific and localized function, an idea not unlike Aristotle’s. (He tried to pin anger on the liver.) While doctors arguing the meaning behind the bumps and crevices on the head is interesting, all I want to know is what Phrenologists would have thought of the Coneheads…
