Examination of the Objections made in Britain against the Doctrines of Gall and Spurzheim.

Edinburgh : Printed by Walker and Greig : Sold Macbredie, Skelly, and Muckersy; London : Baldwin, Chradock and Joy, 1817, 8°, (2), 87, (1) pp., feiner Pappband.; Titelblatt Randfleckig. First Edition! "The observations will be divided into three Chapters. The first will contain Anaatomical, the second Physiological, and the third Philosophical considerations." Introduction "There were no further personal confrontations between Gordon and Spurzheim. They continued their rivalry in print. Gordon, his pride and status injured, wrote an entire book devoted to condemning his opponent: Observations on the structure of the brain, comprising an estimate of the claims of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim to discovery in the anatomy of that organ (1817). Again Gordon expatiated on what he knew best: the minutiae of cerebral anatomy and traditional dissection techniques." However, this time Gordon seemed to cast his arguments in the style used by his opponent, using Nature as shorthand for brains or reality: T am quite persuaded that no one can consult the history of the science [of brain anatomy], and afterwards appeal to nature, without being convinced, that such of their statements are peculiar to them', 'because they have no existence in nature'. Perhaps Gordon felt tempted to use some of his wily opponent's argumentative techniques. Spurzheim, while still in windy Edinburgh, wrote a response to Gordon's Edinburgh Review critique and the hardly less damaging Quarterly Review article. Spurzheim denied and argued against many of the particular criticisms of his reviewers; however, when his need was greatest, Spurzheim fell back on an appeal to the authority of Nature. For example, after quoting Gordon: ' "If [Gall & Spurzheim] succeed in convincing a single individual of common parts and observation that this assertion is truth, they will find little difficulty, we apprehend, in persuading mankind in general, that they hear by their eyes, and see by their ears,'" Spurzheim answered this accusation in the very next sentence with the incongruous-sounding: 'We think nature is constant in its laws, and never makes an exception.' Here, Spurzheim could be accused of completely evading his opponent's criticisms. Why answer the accusation that his system was absurd with an avowal that Nature's laws were constant? Spurzheim's strategy was to associate phrenology so closely with Nature that the unassailable attributes of Nature would vindicate phrenology. At times, Nature was Spurzheim's only card, and he manoeuvred to make it a strong one as his opponents assailed him with multifarious criticisms of his reasoning and data. Monro wrote of Spurzheim's 1817 book: 'Never was there a more evident attempt to evade the overwhelming force of unwelcome facts'. Spurzheim countered with: 'Even in Edinburgh nature makes no exception', and so re-asserted the same argument exposed by the Quarterly Review, that irrefragable Nature is truth and therefore so were Spurzheim's conclusions. The connection was not elaborated on by Spurzheim more than analogically, nor would it ever be; but the precedent in Britain was set. Spurzheim's critics could shake their heads in disgust, but Spurzheim felt safe wrapped in the protective cloak of his 'immutable Nature'. Gordon could complain 'that he was heartily tired of the mass of nonsense he had been obliged to wade through' in Spurzheim's work, while Spurzheim replied doggedly: 'I only depend on the constant laws of nature.' Gordon did not respond to Spurzheim's book though he continued to make a target of Spurzheim in his lectures until his early death in 1818." Johan van Wyhe: Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism (2004) Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (31. Dezember 1776 in Longuich bei Trier - 10. November 1832 in Boston, Massachusetts) deutscher Arzt und Phrenologe.) - "1815 veröffentlichte er sein erstes eigenes Buch Drs. Gall and Spurzheim's physiognomical System, .…