Reading Faces: from Artificial Intelligence to Aristotle
The chapter is part of a proposed book on how historically faces have been 'read' to identify peo... more The chapter is part of a proposed book on how historically faces have been 'read' to identify people and impute characteristics and emotional states to them. The chapter shows how the current development and application of emotion-detecting AIs needs to be put into the long history in the West of the assumed relationship between emotions and facial expressions stretching back to the Ancient Greeks.
This paper addresses the question of why state-sponsored medical statisticians in Britain associa... more This paper addresses the question of why state-sponsored medical statisticians in Britain associated with the General Register Office (GRO) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), failed to address the issue of poverty in any great depth in the inter-war period, and why, when they did, especially with regard to unemployment in depressed areas, they tended to dismiss its importance. These men were not fools or charlatans - like all professionals they were aware of the limitations of their data and methods. Their work also pointed up some of the inadequacies of the criticisms made of the Ministry of Health’s policies. However, the papers of these statisticians often betrayed a set of assumptions about the nature of working-class life, and eugenic ideas, which undermined the objectivity of their analyses, and some of their activities can be shown to be a direct consequence of the requirement to defend central administrative policy, and thus their own official positions and funding.
In recent years historians have taken an increasing interest in the senses in the past, both in t... more In recent years historians have taken an increasing interest in the senses in the past, both in terms of how people in the past understood the senses, and how our sensory experience of the past world, if we were placed in it, would diverge from our experience of the modern environment. However, somewhat less consideration has been given to how past understandings of the sensory world are still current in our present world, and how this helps to explain contemporary beliefs and cultural phenomena. This short article looks at one sense, sight, and explores some implications of the survival of older understandings of optics in our contemporary world. This means that beliefs which may appear illogical to (some) modern eyes, may seem perfectly sensible in the past, or in some circumstances, if the processes of seeing and perception are understood in a particular way. This present article touches on some of these apparently pre-scientific vestiges, including the evil eye, mirror magic and physiognomy, as an invitation to further exploration.
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Drafts by Edward Higgs