Here, from a collection of scientific instruments, is the lovely dragoyle.
Elsewhere In the he fascinating Whipple Museum of the History of Science, you can find “scientific” apparatus for phrenology (diagnosing head bumps and lumps to measure such human traits as “combativeness.”)
Phrenologywas once a time-honored way to do scientific study. Melvil Dewey gave "Phrenology" an entire integer (139) in his library decimal catalog system. For comparison, "modern Western philosophy" also got one entire integer (190).
The history of science is full of fascinating discoveries and proud achievements, but it is also full of cautionary examples and multiple proofs that calling something “scientific” doesn’t make it so.
3 responses so far ↓
1 TA // Dec 19, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Yes, and just between you and me :) subjects with names ending in “ology” tend to be particularly… quirky. But I’m sure the conference is great fun nonetheless.
2 Betsy Devine // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:44 am
That idea should get some scientific study, maybe even a research field of its own.
And, for the name of said field, let’s use “Ology-ology.”
3 TA // Dec 20, 2007 at 4:01 pm
But then, would ologyology be quirky, dubly quirky or quirky squared?
Maybe we need an expert on sogol theory to answer that? But in order to know how much faith to put in the answer, we would also need to know what that field is properly called. If it’s sogolology, we may have a problem…