On Melville's Critique On Pseudo-Sciences In Moby-Dick

Melville’s Critique on Pseudo-Sciences in Moby-Dick

Herman Melville is well known for his sea narratives, but most importantly for his novel Moby-Dick. The adventure of Ishmael and captain Ahab's hunt for the elusive great whale still intrigues people of all ages around the world and is arguably one of the most acclaimed American novels ever written. According to Arvin, Moby-Dick was written to compensate for Melville’s financial debts. However, it was not just written on pecuniary grounds or to fully entertain the reader, but a more latent reason and meaning is present.
Melville strongly disagreed with the absurd ideas and practices that emerged from pseudo-scientific theories like craniology, phrenology, and physiognomy in the early nineteenth

Firstly, phrenology was utilized to explain how certain areas of the brain were linked to how someone is as a person inherently. These areas were mapped with their features (as seen in the drawing); a bigger area would indicate that the feature would be more apparent. Melville also literally describes phrenology by comparing captain Ahab’s mapping of charts with the light that casts on his face and, because of that, “some invincible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead” (167). Doing so could be a way to trigger the reader to be more attentive of subtle ways of applicableness of

For instance, he claims (in Ishmael’s voice) in the first chapter that his story “is the key to it all” (20). With this he could mock the naivety of the architects of pseudo-sciences who would also argue that their theories are “the key to it all” (20). He further elaborates this naivety when Ishmael is depicting the whale’s colour in The Whiteness of the Whale. Ishmael is confused by the ominous, and not positive, vibes that the whale’s whiteness emits. This confusion is Melville’s way of saying that applying, for instance, physiognomy to any creature does not always give answers one would expect. In other words, pseudo-sciences are false, not reliable, and usage of them should be avoided. He even mentions (during Ishmael’s practise of phrenology on the whale’s head) that “Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphs. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man’s and every being’s face” (274-275). By making this comparison, Melville is criticizing everybody that is involved in the creation of pseudo-sciences by simply saying that it does not exist and, therefore, is impossible to put in practise. Moreover, the arguing in The Doubloon also resembles all the different ways of looking at something: “I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look they look” (335). The same can be said about