Phrenology

This is a discredited “science” that studied the shape of a human’s skull, believing it could reveal aspects of their personality or mental makeup. There was a slight racial component, in that the skulls of different races have subtle, yet consistent, shape differences, leading some to believe these controlled personality traits.

Why I Looked It Up

I don’t have the reason in my notes, but I do remember my son mentioning it in passing once.

I had confused it with the study of the kidneys in the past, but that’s “nephrology.”

Postscript

From The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office, which I am re-reading:

At age eleven, he was taken to see a doctor of phrenology (a pseudoscience already on the wane by 1920), who assessed Coase’s intellectual prospects based on the shape of his skull.