Wild elephants play at a wild life sanctuary in Sri Lanka. The island’s elephant population has dwindled to some 4,000 from a high of 12,000.
A phrenological chart, mapping the different zones of the human brain. “Destructiveness” is near the ear; “Individuality” is right above the nose.
Why do we talk about foreheads when discussing culture? The word “highbrow” first appeared in the 1880s; “lowbrow” came into use right after the turn of the century. They came from phrenology, a nineteenth-century pseudoscience based on the (entirely false) idea that the shape of a person’s skull revealed something fundamental about their character. The creative, intellectual parts of the brain were located behind the forehead: thus Anglo-Saxons were superior to other, darker races because of their higher foreheads, or “brows.” Italians, Irishmen, Africans, Asians couldn’t create art on the level of Shakespeare or Milton because their brains simply weren’t built for it. They belonged to the “lowbrow,” on account of their lower foreheads.
Check out Perry Meisel’s The Myth of Popular Culture from Dante to Dylan for more on this.
Einstein was good friends with the film star Charlie Chaplin. (Pictured here: Einstein and Chaplin attend the premiere of Chaplin’s great film, City Lights, in 1931.) Of the crowds that followed them, separately and when they attended events together, Chaplin told Einstein, “People cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because nobody understands you.”
