Physiognomy | Ancient Practices & Modern Applications (2024)

physiognomy, the study of the systematic correspondence of psychological characteristics to facial features or body structure. Because most efforts to specify such relationships have been discredited, physiognomy sometimes connotes pseudoscience or charlatanry. Physiognomy was regarded by those who cultivated it both as a mode of discriminating character by the outward appearance and as a method of divination from form and feature.

Physiognomy is of great antiquity, and in ancient and medieval times it had an extensive literature. Inasmuch as genetic flaws are sometimes revealed by physical characteristics (e.g., the characteristic appearance of Down syndrome, with up-slanted eyes and broad, flat face), some elements of physiognomy evolved in physiology and biochemistry.

In its second aspect—i.e., divination from form and feature—it was related to astrology and other forms of divination, and this aspect of the subject bulked large in the fanciful literature of the Middle Ages. There is evidence in the earliest classical literature, including Homer and Hippocrates, that physiognomy formed part of the most ancient practical philosophy.

The earliest-known systematic treatise on physiognomy is attributed to Aristotle. In it he devoted six chapters to the consideration of the method of study, the general signs of character, the particular appearances characteristic of the dispositions, of strength and weakness, of genius and stupidity, and so on. Then he examined the characters derived from the different features, and from colour, hair, body, limbs, gait, and voice. While discussing noses, for example, he says that those with thick, bulbous ends belong to persons who are insensitive, swinish; sharp-tipped noses belong to the irascible, those easily provoked, like dogs; rounded, large, obtuse noses to the magnanimous, the lionlike; slender, hooked noses to the eaglelike; and so on.

Among the Latin classical authors Juvenal, Suetonius, and Pliny the Elder refer to the practice of physiognomy, and numerous allusions occur in the works of the Christian scholars, especially Clement of Alexandria and Origen. While the earlier classical physiognomy was chiefly descriptive, the later medieval studies particularly developed the predictive and astrological side, their treatises often digressing into prophetic folklore and magic.

Along with the medical science of the period, Arabian writers such as the alchemist ar-Rāzī and Averroës also contributed to the literature of physiognomy. The medicine of systematic correspondence that evolved in China after the period of the Warring States is still associated with traditional Chinese science and has some bearing on the doctrine of yin-yang.

Physiognomy also is treated (in some cases extensively) by such scholars as Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, John Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas. The development of a more accurate anatomy in the 17th century seems to have dampened the scientific interest in physiognomy. In the 18th and 19th centuries physiognomy was proposed as a means of detecting criminal tendencies, but each system was examined and discarded as fallacious, and by the 20th century physiognomy—as it was known in earlier times—was largely regarded as a historical subject.