George Combe
George Combe ( born October 21, 1788 in Edinburgh, † August 14 1858 in Farnham, England) was a Scottish lawyer and writer, who has worked with phrenology and education.
Family
George Combe grew up with his brother Andrew jüngereren Combe, who was a famous physicist and, like him, a famous phrenologist, at near Edinburgh. He married in 1833 Cecilia Siddons, a daughter of the famous tragic actress Sarah Siddons, the recorded great success in London's Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
Career
After he attended the High School of Edinburgh, he began in 1804 his studies in law at the University of Edinburgh. At the same time, he worked at a law firm until 1812 he opened his own law firm, which was extremely successful because he made a good lawyer by his prudence and diligence, and so maintained a large law firm.
As in 1815, the Edinburgh Review an article on the system of " craniology " by Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim contained, which was denounced by the public as " a piece of thorough quackery from beginning to end ," George Combe began for the interested as phrenology and Spurzheim 1816 was visiting Edinburgh, George Combe began to deal seriously with the teaching.
So he founded in 1823, with the help of his friends and with his brother, as I said, a phrenologist, the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal, which accompanied George honorary over 23 years. After he went to Germany in 1837 and his law firm dissolved, to devote himself full of phrenology, he visited the United States with his wife. He stayed for two years and held during the stay 158 lectures on phrenology. After his return to the UK in June 1840, he published his moral philosophy.
In 1842, Combe held a course of 22 lectures on phrenology in the Ruprecht -Karls- University of Heidelberg, he also traveled extensively in Europe, visiting schools, prisons and asylums.
Education
He tried to form the lower layers to improve and he helped a school that should run with the principles of William Ellis, only without the religious background. It opened on 4 December 1848 William Mattieu Willams as a reactor. Due to high demand the school moved shortly after the opening order already. But when Williams left the school in 1854 was the collapse of the ambitious and encyclopedic curriculum. Thus, the school was transformed into an auditorium and shows that the idea of education of Combe "volatile", although she has incorporated some educational ideas.
Works
- Essays on Phrenology, or an Inquiry into the System of Gall and Spurzheim (1819 )
- System of Phrenology ( 2 vols., 8vo, 1824)
- The Constitution of Man ( 1828)
- Moral Philosophy (1840 )
- Notes on the United States of North America ( 1841)
Published by:
- Edinburgh Phrenological Journal (1823-1846)