Physiognomy - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face

Face

The face is a central sense organ complex, for those animals that have one, normally on the ventral surface of the head, and can, depending on the definition in the human case, include the hair, forehead, eyebrow, eyelashes, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, mouth, lips, philtrum, temple, teeth, skin, and...

. The term physiognomy can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object or terrain, without reference to its implied characteristics.

The credence of such study has varied from time to time. The practice was well-accepted by the ancient Greek philosopher

Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire...

s, but fell into disrepute in the Middle Ages when practised by vagabonds and mountebanks. It was then revived and popularised by Johann Kaspar Lavater

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Johann Kaspar Lavater was a Swiss poet and physiognomist.-Early life:Lavater was born at Zürich, and educated at the Gymnasium there, where J. J. Bodmer and J. J...

before falling from favour again in the 20th century.

It is now being revived once more, as some new research suggests that people's faces may indicate such traits such as trustworthiness

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness is a moral value considered to be a virtue. A trustworthy person is someone in whom you can place your trust and rest assured that the trust will not be betrayed. A person can prove their trustworthiness by fulfilling an assigned responsibility - and as an extension of that, not to...

, social dominance

Social dominance

Social dominance may refer to:*Social dominance orientation*Social Dominance TheoryFor additional possible meanings see dominance...

and aggression

Aggression

In psychology, as well as other social and behavioral sciences, aggression refers to behavior between members of the same species that is intended to cause humiliation, pain, or harm. Ferguson and Beaver defined aggressive behavior as "Behavior which is intended to increase the social dominance of...

. The latter trait seems to be determined by the level of the hormone testosterone

Testosterone

Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...

during puberty

Puberty

Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...

, which affects the ratio between the height and width of the face - aggressive individuals are found to have wider faces.

Physiognomy is also sometimes referred to as anthroposcopy, though the expression was more common in the 19th century when the word originated.

Ancient physiognomy

Notions of the relationship between an individual's outward appearance and inner character are historically ancient, and occasionally appear in early Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

poetry. The first indications of a developed physiognomic theory appear in 5th century BC Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, with the works of Zopyrus (who was featured in a dialogue by Phaedo of Elis

Phaedo of Elis

Phaedo of Elis was a Greek philosopher. A native of Elis, he was captured in war and sold into slavery. He subsequently came into contact with Socrates at Athens who warmly received him and had him freed. He was present at the death of Socrates, and Plato named one of his dialogues Phaedo...

), who was said to be expert in the art. By the 4th century BC, the philosopher Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

makes frequent reference to theory and literature concerning the relationship of appearance to character. Aristotle was apparently receptive to such an idea, as evidenced by a passage in his Prior Analytics (2.27).
The first systematic physiognomic treatise to survive to the present day is a slim volume, Physiognomonica (English: Physiognomonics), ascribed to Aristotle (but probably of his "school" rather than created by the philosopher himself). The volume is divided into two parts, conjectured to have been originally two separate works. The first section discusses arguments drawn from nature or other races, and concentrates on the concept of human behavior. The second section focuses on animal behavior, dividing the animal kingdom into male and female types. From these are deduced correspondences between human form and character.

After Aristotle, the major extant works in physiognomy are:

Polemo of Laodicea
Polemon of Laodiceia
Marcus Antonius Polemon or Antonius Polemon, also known as Polemon of Smyrna or Polemon of Laodicea was a sophist who lived in the 2nd century....

, de Physiognomonia (2nd century AD), in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
Adamantius the Sophist, Physiognomonica (4th century), in Greek
An anonymous Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

author de Phsiognomonia (ca. 4th century)

Ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer and scientist Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

, believed by some to be the originator of physiognomics, once rejected a prospective follower named Cylon simply because of his appearance, which Pythagoras deemed indicative of bad character

Middle Ages

The term was common in Middle English, often written as fisnamy or visnomy (as in the Tale of Beryn, a 15th-century sequel to the Canterbury Tales: "I knowe wele by thy fisnamy, thy kynd it were to stele").

Physiognomy's validity was once widely accepted, and it was taught in universities until the time of Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

, who outlawed it (along with "Palmestrye") in 1531. Around this time, scholastic leaders settled on the more erudite Greek form 'physiognomy' and began to discourage the whole concept of 'fisnamy'.

Modern physiognomy

The principal promoter of physiognomy in modern times was the Swiss pastor Johann Kaspar Lavater

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Johann Kaspar Lavater was a Swiss poet and physiognomist.-Early life:Lavater was born at Zürich, and educated at the Gymnasium there, where J. J. Bodmer and J. J...

(1741–1801) who was briefly a friend of Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

. Lavater's essays on physiognomy were first published in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

in 1772 and gained great popularity. These influential essays were translated into French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. The two principal sources from which Lavater found 'confirmation' of his ideas were the writings of the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

Giambattista della Porta

Giambattista della Porta , also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation....

(1535–1615) and the English physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), whose Religio Medici
Religio Medici
Religio Medici is a book by Sir Thomas Browne, which sets out his spiritual testament as well as being an early psychological self-portrait. In its day, the book was a European best-seller and brought its author fame and respect throughout the continent...

discusses the possibility of the discernment of inner qualities from the outer appearance of the face, thus:
Late in his life Browne affirmed his physiognomical beliefs, writing in his Christian Morals

Christian Morals

Christian Morals is a work in prose written by the physician Sir Thomas Browne as advice for his eldest children. It was published posthumously in 1716. It is a companion piece to his earlier Religio Medici, and consists, as its title implies, of meditations upon Christian values and conduct...

(circa 1675):

Sir Thomas Browne is also credited with the first usage of the word caricature

Caricature

A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

in the English language, whence much of physiognomy movement's pseudo-learning attempted to entrench itself by illustrative means.

Browne possessed several of the writings of the Italian Giambattista della Porta

Giambattista della Porta

including his Of Celestial Physiognomy, which argued that it was not the stars but a person's temperament that influences facial appearance and character. In his book De humana physiognomia (1586), Porta used woodcuts of animals to illustrate human characteristics. His works are well represented in the Library of Sir Thomas Browne

Library of Sir Thomas Browne

No single document gives better evidence of the erudition of Sir Thomas Browne, physician, philosopher and encyclopedist than the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of the Library of Sir Thomas Browne...

; both men sustained a belief in the doctrine of signatures
Doctrine of signatures
The doctrine of signatures is a philosophy shared by herbalists from the time of Dioscurides and Galen. This doctrine states that herbs that resemble various parts of the body can be used to treat ailments of that part of the body. Examples include the plants liverwort; snakeroot, an antidote for...

— that is, the belief that the physical structures of nature such as a plant's roots, stem and flower, were indicative keys (or signatures) to their medicinal potentials.

The great inventor, scientist and artist, Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

, was a critic of physiognomy in the early 16th century he said 'I do not concern myself with false physiognomy...there is no truth in them and this can be proven because these chimeras have no scientific foundation' He did however believe that lines caused by facial expressions could indicate personality traits i.e. 'those who have deep and noticeable lines between the eyebrows are irascible'

The popularity of physiognomy grew throughout the 18th century and into the 19th century. It influenced the descriptive abilities of many Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an novelists, notably Balzac, and portrait artists, such as Joseph Ducreux

Joseph Ducreux

Joseph, Baron Ducreux was a French portrait painter, pastelist, miniaturist, and engraver, who was a successful portraitist at the court of Louis XVI of France, and was able to resume his career after the French Revolution...

; meanwhile, the 'Norwich

Norwich

Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...

connection' to physiognomy developed in the writings of Amelia Opie

Amelia Opie

Amelia Opie, née Alderson , was an English author who published numerous novels in the Romantic Period of the early 19th century, through 1828.-Life and work:...

and travelling linguist George Borrow

George Borrow

George Henry Borrow was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his own experiences around Europe. Over the course of his wanderings, he developed a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe. They figure prominently in his work...

. A host of other 19th century English authors were influenced by the idea, notably evident in the detailed physiognomic descriptions of characters in the novels of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

, Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

and Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...

.

Physiognomy is a central, implicit assumption underlying the plot of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

's The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...

. In 19th century American literature, physiognomy figures prominently in the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

Phrenology

Phrenology is a pseudoscience primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules...

was also considered a form of physiognomy. It was created around 1800 by German physician Franz Joseph Gall

Franz Joseph Gall

Franz Joseph Gall was a neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain.- Life :...

and Johann Spurzheim

Johann Spurzheim

Johann Gaspar Spurzheim was a German physician who became one of the chief proponents of phrenology created approximately in 1800 by Franz Joseph Gall...

, and was widely popular in the 19th century in Europe

Europe

and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. In the U.S., physician James W. Redfield published his Comparative Physiognomy in 1852, illustrating with 330 engravings the "Resemblances between Men and Animals." He finds these in appearance and (often metaphorically) character, e.g. Germans to Lions, Negroes to Elephants and Fishes, Chinamen to Hogs, Yankees to Bears, Jews to Goats.

During the late 19th century, English psychometrician Sir Francis Galton attempted to define physiognomic characteristics of health, disease, beauty, and criminality, via a method of composite photography. Galton's process involved the photographic superimposition of two or more faces by multiple exposures. After averaging together photographs of violent criminals, he found that the composite appeared "more respectable" than any of the faces comprising it; this was likely due to the irregularities of the skin across the constituent images being averaged out in the final blend. With the advent of computer technology during the early 1990s, Galton's composite technique has been adopted and greatly improved using computer graphics software .

A physiognomist named Yoshito Mizuno was employed from 1936 to 1945 by the Imperial Japanese Naval Aeronautics Department, examining candidates for the Naval Air Corps, after - to their surprise - Admiral Yamamoto

Isoroku Yamamoto

was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student of Harvard University ....

's staff discovered that he could predict with over 80% accuracy the qualifications of candidates to become successful pilots.

Practitioners of the personality type theory socionics

Socionics

Socionics , in psychology, is a theory of information processing and personality type, distinguished by its information model of the psyche and a model of interpersonal relations. It incorporates Carl Jung's work on Psychological Types with Antoni Kępiński's theory of information metabolism...

use physiognomy as a personality identification technique. Noted teacher and trainer H.C. Linguere is known to say "Physiognomics provides a great tactical advantage in achieving objectives. The body never lies."

A February 2009 article in the New Scientist reported that: "...the field is undergoing something of a revival. Researchers around the world are re-evaluating what we see in a face, investigating whether it can give us a glimpse of someone's personality or even help to shape their destiny. What is emerging is a "new physiognomy" which is more subtle but no less fascinating than its old incarnation." In a study by Tufts University, published on January 18, 2010, it was discovered that students could classify, with great accuracy, photos of real people according to the subject's political orientation, though the precise causality of the phenomenon remains unclear.

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation hired physiognomists to do an analysis of the heir of North Korea

North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...

, future leader Kim Jong Un.

Related disciplines

Anthropological criminology
Anthropological criminology
Anthropological criminology is a field of offender profiling, based on perceived links between the nature of a crime and the personality or physical appearance of the offender...
Anthropometry
Anthropometry
Anthropometry refers to the measurement of the human individual...
Characterology
Characterology
Characterology is a method of character reading that attempted to combine revised physiognomy, reconstructed phrenology and amplified pathognomy, with ethnology, sociology and anthropology. Developed by L...
Palmistry
Phrenology
Phrenology
Phrenology is a pseudoscience primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules...
Pathognomy
Pathognomy
Pathognomy is the study of passions and emotions. It refers to the expression of emotions indicated by the voice, gestures and facial expression. While physiognomy is used to predict the overall, long-term character of an individual, pathognomy is used to ascertain clues about one's current character...
Personology
Somatotype and Constitutional Psychology
Somatotype and constitutional psychology
Constitutional psychology is a theory, developed in the 1940s by American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon, associating body types with human temperament types....

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Ancient physiognomy

Middle Ages

Modern physiognomy

Related disciplines

Further reading

External links