Brain and Race A History of Cerebral Anthropology (Nuncius, 4)

For nearly two centuries, the racial significance of the human brain has absorbed a huge amount of scientific energy, despite the frequency of shortcomings and disappointing results. This book tries to show and explain the resilience of such a thorny issue. Contents 6 Illustrations 8 Introduction 12 Chapter 1 20 Eighteenth-century Onset 20 1 Darker Skin and Brain 20 2 Qualitative and Quantitative Differences 34 3 Speculations and Objections 56 Chapter 2 73 Rising Tide 73 1 The “Phrenological Wedge” 73 2 Shrunken Brains 89 3 Materialism and the Recapitulation Theory 106 4 Weighing Empty, Filled Spaces 118 5 The Will to Differentiate 131 6 Early Doubts 146 Chapter 3 157 Climax 157 1 Uncertain Certainty: Paris on Stage 157 2 An Intense Decade 172 3 An Urgent Desideratum for Science 193 4 Antinomies and Paradoxes 204 5 Orphans of Broca 224 6 “A Literature by Itself” 237 Chapter 4 244 Twentieth-century Epilogue 244 1 Resilience Despite Everything 244 2 Further Views in Conflict 262 3 Innovating Techniques, Popular Science, and Deconstructing Myths 282 Summary 308 1 308 2 309 3 310 4 311 Bibliography 314 Index of Names 353 "Since the second half of the eighteenth century, generations of scientists persisted in studying the relationships between the volume, weight or shape of the human brain and the degree of 'intelligence'. In Pogliano's book, the thread of time drives the narrative up to the mid-twentieth century. It investigates the duration and changes of a game that was intrinsically political, although having to do with bones and nervous matter. Races made its main object, during a long period when Western culture believed the human species to be naturally partitioned into a number of discrete types, with their innate and hereditary traits. Never leading to irrefutable achievements, the polycentric (as well as visual) enterprise herein described is full of growing tensions, doubts, and disillusionment"-- Provided by publisher