Darwin, Expression, and the Lasting Legacy of Eugenics
If evolution is seen as the study of unseen development, the camera provided the illusion of quantifiable benchmarks, an irresistible proposition for the advocates of eugenics.
The Austrian-born Bernard Hollander favored a quantitative approach to phrenological diagnosis, and is shown here methodically measuring his own skull. His meticulous view of the critical role of cranial measurement mirrored Galton’s in its obsessive assessment of statistical averages. Image: Wellcome Collection. Bernard Hollander: Cranial Measurement (1902)
By: Jessica Helfand
In 1872, with the publication of “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,” Charles Darwin went rogue. Only a decade after the anatomist Duchenne de Boulogne’s produced the first neurology text illustrated by photographs, Darwin claimed to be the first to use photographs in a scientific publication to actually document the expressive spectrum of the face.
Combining speculation about raised eyebrows and flushed skin with vile commentary about mental illness, he famously logged diagrams of facial musculature, along with drawings of sulky chimpanzees and photographs of weeping infants, to create a study that spanned species, temperament, age, and gender. But what really interested him was not so much the specificity of the individual as the universality of the tribe: If expressions could, as de Boulogne had suggested, be physically localized, could they also be culturally generalized?
Read Full Article »
