Sunday, December 03, 2006

Stupid Theories involving Charles Darwin....

I was doodling a comic about Charles Darwin for National Monkey Day, and a weird idea popped into my head when I found out what Darwin looked like. Check this bit of craziness out:
Charles Darwin was born in 1809. Growing up, a certain "scientific" movement was rather popular. Does anyone else out there recall Phrenology (or Physiognomy, depending)?
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It was pretty much the study that said that we could determine how intelligent you are based off the shape of your head. It was used to justify all sorts of racism (because some races were "cursed" with "the brow of a criminal") and all other sorts of nastiness. The thing is, it was apparently crazy popular during Darwin's lifetime. This isn't that important, unless you actually take a look to see what Charles Darwin looked like:
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If you look in the mirror every morning and see a brow ridge like that and live in a world where scientists can pretend to judge people based off your facial features, would it really be hard to think that one of these could be your ancestor?
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I'm not discounting evolution at all...It makes a hell of a lot of sense and there's evidence for it all over the place. I've just had this in my brain and needed to vent. Scientists who came up with phrenology had a personal reason for doing so (justifying racism, for example)...just like my psychiatrist decided to become a psychiatrist for a reason (troubled childhood, for example). I just think it'd be funny if Darwin became, well DARWIN because he needed to justify what he saw in the mirror.
A totally wrong theory, but fun for some reason.
-jared
PS: Sorry for the lack of articles over the past few weeks...I've been stupid busy with commissions and other zaniness, which should all become clear (including 19 new Opera inks) very soon. Thanks for being patient with me.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

i like your twisted thinking,just needed to say that

8:48 AM  
Blogger Adam Holwerda said...

Another big part of it was the size of the skull. That's why women were seen as being indisputedly inferior to men - their craniums were smaller.

Darwin actually helped disprove this later, because he had a small monkey head and turned out to be pretty smart.

9:48 PM  
Blogger Scarecrobot said...

Once you get past the racism issue (since that was what it was first intended for), Phrenology ( Did I spell that right???) is kinda interesting...

1:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Do you belive that god created us?

9:05 AM  

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