The scientific study of the head, skull, brain, and the characteristics and variations of human heads.
From Greek kephalē (head) + -logia (study, discourse about). Developed in the 18th-19th centuries as a pseudo-scientific field that studied skull shapes and head measurements.
Cephalology had a dark history—it was used to justify racism through phrenology and craniology, measuring skull sizes to wrongly 'prove' some races were inferior. Learning this teaches us how scientific-sounding terms can mask prejudice, and why careful ethics matter in science.
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