ABSTRACT
The idea of a behavioural phenotype sets off in two diametrically opposing directions at once. In terms of pure theory it starts from the natural phenomenon of genes, which give rise to psychological classifications that give rise to a social phenomenon, anxiety. Children were said to resemble their parents physiognomically for three or four generations, the same requirement as for the authentification of a family’s gentility. This chapter describes some of recurring themes of physiognomics. First of all the individual’s physiognomy was linked to his cranial sutures, the cracks along which separate sections of the skull are aligned. The second Hippocratic author had depicted each sutural arrangement as a letter of the alphabet, and Galen, followed by dozens of Renaissance Galenists, adopted this schema. According to Ali ibn Abbas, women kept their hair as they got older because their brains were excessively humid, which impaired their intellectual functions; their cranial sutures were narrower than men’s and so had poorer drainage.
