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Craniology and the Battle of the Sexes
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Liberal Studies: Gender in Science In God, Women and the New Physics, Wertheim reports on craniology as a scientific discipline. Explain what craniology is and what its supposed purpose is. Explain how craniologists argue for male intellectual superiority no matter what empirical evidence they use as the starting point for their arguments. Explain the objections that can be made against the various assumptions that craniologists make in their arguments, and why, as a scientific discipline, craniology appears to be misguided.
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Craniology and the Battle of the Sexes
Craniology is the study of the shape, size, and proportion of the skull. Craniology emerged as a pseudoscience in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was used as a basis for determining a person’s character and intellectual abilities. The association of intellectual ability with the skull’s size was informed by the belief that cerebral cortex stored a person’s mental faculties. It followed, accordingly, that the larger the skull the bigger the space for storing mental faculties, and effectively, the more intelligent the person. In this essay I discuss the use of craniology to support the age-old patra8crachal ideology that men are intellectually superior to women, and an analysis of why this approach is flawed.
Beginning in the mid-18th century, craniology was used in conjunction with anatomy to justify the supposed intellectual superiority of men over women (Wertheim 148). Having successfully measured the size of the human skull, and found that women’s cranial size was relatively smaller in proportion to their bodies than men’s, the Enlightenment philosophers used this new knowledge to support the old belief that women was naturally inferior to women, especially as it pertained to the study of the sciences. In this regard, the purpose of craniology is to deny women the opportunity to compete with men in those spheres of life that are considered to naturally belong to men. In so doing, craniology afforded men "scientific" evidence to justify the continued marginalization of women and further entrenchment of patriarchy in society.
Craniologists argue for men’s intellectual superiority over women regardless the starting empirical evidence because they apply a two-edged principle to prove that women’s skull size demonstrate their inferior intellectual endowment compared with men. The first argument is deductive and rests on the premise that cranial size is directly proportional to intellectual ability. Since women’s cranial size was found to be smaller in proportion to their body sizes than in men, craniologists concluded that women must be intellectually inferior to men.
However, a problem arose when it was proved that women’s cranial size is actually larger in proportion to their bodies than men’s (Wertheim 148). The logical response was to concede that women were intellectually superior to men if cranial size was the standard measure of intelligence. However, the craniologists pointed to the fact that it that were the case, then children ought to be considered intellectually superior than adults because given their smaller body size, they have a larger cranial to body size ratio than grown-ups, paving way for the second argument. Of course, craniologists could not support the idea of intellectually superior children because it was unpractical and scientifically fallacious. To show that children’s bigger cranial size in proportion to their bodies did not imply their intellectual superiority, it became necessary to find an alternative explanation that could fit with the fact that children’s cranial size was bigger in proportion to their body...
Subject
Course
Date
Craniology and the Battle of the Sexes
Craniology is the study of the shape, size, and proportion of the skull. Craniology emerged as a pseudoscience in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was used as a basis for determining a person’s character and intellectual abilities. The association of intellectual ability with the skull’s size was informed by the belief that cerebral cortex stored a person’s mental faculties. It followed, accordingly, that the larger the skull the bigger the space for storing mental faculties, and effectively, the more intelligent the person. In this essay I discuss the use of craniology to support the age-old patra8crachal ideology that men are intellectually superior to women, and an analysis of why this approach is flawed.
Beginning in the mid-18th century, craniology was used in conjunction with anatomy to justify the supposed intellectual superiority of men over women (Wertheim 148). Having successfully measured the size of the human skull, and found that women’s cranial size was relatively smaller in proportion to their bodies than men’s, the Enlightenment philosophers used this new knowledge to support the old belief that women was naturally inferior to women, especially as it pertained to the study of the sciences. In this regard, the purpose of craniology is to deny women the opportunity to compete with men in those spheres of life that are considered to naturally belong to men. In so doing, craniology afforded men "scientific" evidence to justify the continued marginalization of women and further entrenchment of patriarchy in society.
Craniologists argue for men’s intellectual superiority over women regardless the starting empirical evidence because they apply a two-edged principle to prove that women’s skull size demonstrate their inferior intellectual endowment compared with men. The first argument is deductive and rests on the premise that cranial size is directly proportional to intellectual ability. Since women’s cranial size was found to be smaller in proportion to their body sizes than in men, craniologists concluded that women must be intellectually inferior to men.
However, a problem arose when it was proved that women’s cranial size is actually larger in proportion to their bodies than men’s (Wertheim 148). The logical response was to concede that women were intellectually superior to men if cranial size was the standard measure of intelligence. However, the craniologists pointed to the fact that it that were the case, then children ought to be considered intellectually superior than adults because given their smaller body size, they have a larger cranial to body size ratio than grown-ups, paving way for the second argument. Of course, craniologists could not support the idea of intellectually superior children because it was unpractical and scientifically fallacious. To show that children’s bigger cranial size in proportion to their bodies did not imply their intellectual superiority, it became necessary to find an alternative explanation that could fit with the fact that children’s cranial size was bigger in proportion to their body...
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