Talk:Human nose

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page has been vandalized. I can't fix it really, but search for 9 miles. And "famous people with noses" doesn't make sense. 203.125.111.50 (talk) 00:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of Nasology copied over from Talk:Nose. The talk page at Nose was not copied over over when this article was split off from Nose.

[edit] Nasology

I have removed the following section from the article because Talking Heads - Phrenology at the Countway Library of Medicine describes Nasology as "an extended joke at the expense of phrenology":

==Shapes of the human nose== Human noses can take many different shapes according to the individual. An attempt to make a classification of noses was made in Eden Warwick's Nasology, where the following classes are presented, associating them with character traits in a way akin to phrenology, this

  • Class I: The Roman, or Aquiline nose, which is rather convex, but undulating as its name aquiline imports.
  • Class II: The Greek or Straight nose, which is perfectly straight
  • Class III: The African, or Wide-nostrilled nose, wide at the end, thick and broad, gradually widening from below the bridge. The other noses are seen in profile, but this one in full face.
  • Class IV: The Jewish or Hawk nose, which is very convex, and preserves its convexity like a bow. It is thin and sharp
  • Class V: The Snub nose
  • Class VI: The Turn-up or Celestial nose, with a continuous concavity from the eyes to the tip

Class I

Class II

Class III

Class IV

Class V

Class VI

-- Donald Albury(Talk) 12:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


I'd keep this paragraph: the classification in se is correct, the figures are nice, but it is the interpretation that was intended to mock phrenology. I'll add however some extended comment to explain it. LHOON 12:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Be careful of Class IV. Calling that caricature of a nose Jewish smacks of anti-Semitism. I am against using any part of this, as the classification scheme itself was part of the joke. I think the whole thing is in very poor taste, and does not belong in the Nose article. It might be appropriate in Phrenology as an example of the reaction to Phrenology, but I do not think it belongs here. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 14:01, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems interesting to me to keep a paragraph about human nose morphology. Rather than engaging in an edit and revert war about this however, let's get some other people's opinion about this issue, maybe there are other proposals too, that's what a talk page is for! LHOON 14:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I suggest removing it because these arbitrary distinctions in nose shape are obscure. They are also named after racial groups which is not objective. An objective approach would be to name them by shape, but even then there are more shapes than listed on the drawing gallery.--Dark Tichondrias 21:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Calling that caricature of a nose Jewish smacks of anti-Semitism. Don't be ridiculous. And this is why you prefer that the public remain uninformed about the different types of noses? --72.94.206.35 03:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Calling that shape of nose Jewish is indeed a common tactic of anti-semites. I also question the reality of the so-called nose types. Noses vary in many ways, and trying to assign them to types is subjective and not useful, especially when some of the types are called Roman, Greek, African and Jewish. -- Donald Albury 23:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Obviously, this is a sensitive to subject to many people, but rather than erasing the classifications, I propose that we include them in a historical and social context. The article needs discussion of the fact that in the past, anthropologists (and popular imagination) have assigned intellectual characteristics to physical features (essentially, races). Anti-Semitism and racism take this further to imputing "moral" characteristics to physical features. This would be a perfect place for a mention of the use of the disputed "Jewish nose" for propaganda purposes, for example in Nazi Germany. As to whether "nasology" (or whatever the classification of noses is called) is a joke: as late as 1949 a Yiddish textbook, Uriel Weinreich's College Yiddish, took nasal types seriously enough to include an informal survey listing the various types of noses that Jewish people possessed in a particular city, showing that they do not fall categorically under the "Jewish" type. Perhaps in this article we should take out the ethnic description of the noses, as Donald Albury suggested, and list the types by their shape only, though some discussion of ethnicity in historical or social context should be included somewhere. Travis P. Johnson 05:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
A well-sourced discussion of the use and mis-use of nose shapes to classify and pre-judge people would be good. The point I was making is that the cited source for 'Nasology' was apparantly intended to mock Phrenology, and was not intented to be taken seriously. -- Donald Albury 02:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
"A well-sourced discussion of the use and mis-use of nose shapes to classify and pre-judge people" does not belong on an article on the nose, IMHO. I personally think it would belong better in an article about invalid stereotypes. --Kjoonlee 02:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Also, it didn't look like it was particularly well-sourced, and neither was it a neat discussion. If info on nose morphology would be nice, something else would definitely be better. --Kjoonlee 02:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
One other thing: my nose doesn't fit with any of those types... --61.72.41.169 02:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll look to some other historical sources and try to find suitable figures. However, any connection between nose shape and personality traits should be considered - at the very least - controversial and should be treated with reserve. LHOON 08:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Can you have a mix of two 'types'?I seem to have the bump desribed in class I (at the top of the nose). Then curves back in and finally goes into kind of a ski dip at the septum turning up, like the last class. If you run a finger over it, it is kind of a wave. And juts out heaps from the face (i have a very high nose bridge). Any ideas what 'category' my nose fits in? Some people have described it as 'Russian'...203.164.47.220 (talk)

@ Albury: The noses are named Greek, Roman etc. after the nose forms on Greek/Roman statues that vary. Anyone with common sese will understand that all Greeks and/or Italians don't have noses of that sort. It's simply a human trait, we just have to have a name for everything and catalogue it. --DerMeister (talk) 13:49, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

And which statues are the models for the "Jewish" and "African" noses? -- Donald Albury 02:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The book these came from is called "Notes on Noses" by Richard Bentley (published in 1852), you can find the PDF by searching. It is quite ridiculous and makes claims about ones character based on their nose shape (mocking Phrenology, as stated above). Since it is not remotely scientific and misses many types, it should really be replaced. Wouldn't plastic surgeons have more accurate information? Ezweave80 (talk) 05:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it should be replaced, but not until we can find something more useful. If there is a more accurate classification of nose-types from the areas of nose morphology or plastic surgery, then we should use those instead. But so far, this is the closest thing anyone could find to a legitimate nose classification system. Many of todays terms started out as jokes, and if we don't want the nose-classification system proposed by "Nasology" to become the dominant paradigm, then we need to come up with a system that does a better job of classifying and categorizing noses than Nasology does.

In terms of the noses being called "Greek", "Roman", "African" and "Jewish", these terms are only derogotory if we accept the idea that some nose shapes are intrinsically better (i.e., more desirable or more aesthetic) than others. Since this classification system does not assert that any given nose-type is 'better' than any other (except in a mocking, satyrical sense) then we cannot conclude that this system is promoting one ethnicity over another. Therefore, without a judgement of which nose-shape or ethnicity is 'better' or 'worse', this system is unable to promote prejudice against any given type of human.

In terms of the accuracy of the classification system, it should be noted that all rules (especially those that deal with humans) have exceptions (e.g., "men are taller than women", "those of European descent have less pigmentation than those of African descent", "women have longer hair than men", etc.) So the real quesiton is not whether every last individual accurately falls into the 'right' category every single time, but rather, whether or not there is a more useful rule for classifying noses than the one proposed by Nasology. I personally believe there is, and if I'm the first to find it then I'll post it here. In the meantime, I'd encourage anyone else with a better classification system to post it here, especially if it is less laden with social and historical baggage than the system proposed by the mock-science of Nasology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.98.116 (talk) 18:44, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Do you approve of stereotyping? -- Donald Albury 20:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Interesting question. There are many definitions of stereotyping, but most of them involve "an oversimplified conceptuialization of human groups" and a "positive or negative assessment of the type of person being stereotyped". So no, I'm not in favor of an oversimplified conception of people's noses or in assessing the 'positive' or 'negative' attributes of any given nose shape. The system proposed by Nasology is the least-simple of any system that has been proposed so far. We can't get rid of it just by deleting it (or else others would undelete it). But we can make it look ridiculous and outdated by proposing a better, more accurate system (hopefully one that doesn't mention ethnicities at all).

The concepts of 'categorization' and 'evaluation' are related, but not identical. In the past, people may have put different nose shapes into different categories, and then evaluated some of those categories as being better than others. However, it is possible to classify things without passing judgement on which categories are better or worse. For example, the fact that women were systematically subordinated in the past does not invalidate the current genetic and social categories of gender, which include 'male' and 'female'. It just means that ranking males as 'better' and females as 'worse' is an immoral and disfunctional practice. So far you have made a good case that systematic nose-based discrimination has occured in the past, and I think this should be part of the article. But categories are not inherently incorrect simply because they have been misused by others in the past. And as I said before, they are not invalid simply because they have exceptions (since all rules dealing with humans have exceptions). But they are invalid if they are replaced by better, more accurate systems. So to make a long argument short: 1) the current system blows (no pun intended) 2) but it's the best we have, so 3) let's get busy on finding or constructing a better one (preferably one that does not involve ethnic terms) so that the classification system proposed by 'Nasology' will not become permanent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.58.98.116 (talk) 14:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)