Smells and Bells

Deepest Sense- Savants And Touch After reading about the aesthetics of touch in the Deepest Sense, I was again reminded by a few savants that I had heard about on the Internet.  The first savant was actually unable to speak until the age of two.  Even when he began speaking, he had severe trouble forming sentences and developing at the rate of normal children his age.  One night, however, his parents walked into his room and saw the most magnificent painting they had ever seen.  It was surreal that a child his age was able to produce this type of work.  His parents believed that he was able to portray the experiences he couldn’t share through speech, through art.  They would take him to the beaches and he would draw incredible pictures in the sand in just seconds, before they were washed away by the waves.  He would repeat this process for hours and express himself through his artwork.  Another savant, named Steven Wiltshir...

Spell of the Sensuous- SENSES “In the act of perception, in other words, I enter into a sympathetic relation with the perceived, which is possible only because neither my body nor the sensible exists outside the flux of time, and so each has its own dynamism, its own pulsation and style.  Perception, in this sense, is an attunement or synchronization between my own rhythms and the rhythms of the things themselves, their own tones and textures.”  This paragraph was of particular interest to me because it describes perception in detail.  Since many of us have the same five senses, I think many of us assume that we see the world the same way, thus we perceive it the same way. However, perception is the brain making sense of the information that it is interpreting.  Therefore, all of your past experiences, views about life and morality, friends and family, etc. have an impact on the way you perceive everything.  Since perception occurs in the...

Natural History of the Senses- VISION Like the book explained, often times when we look into the sky and see emptiness, there are actually billions upon billions of things that are happening right in front of our very eyes.  Due to restrictions in our brain  and vision function, we are only able to consciously visualize a certain frequency of visual information. Imagine a boy who is standing at the edge of a pond observing all of the animals and organisms that live in the ecosystem.  To the boy, each organism and animal observes the external world the exact same way he does.  However, this is not the case.  The fish at the bottom of the pond, the tadpoles resting on top, and the birds flying over the water all have different levels of visual processing in their brains. Therefore, each one of these organisms views the world in a unique way that we are unable to ever fully understand.  Our vision may be precise and accurate, but there ...

Natural History of the Senses- SOUND According to the author, music speaks to us so powerfully that many musicians and theorists think it may be an actual language, one that developed about the same time as speech.  There are actually a lot of similarities between music and language that make his claim reasonable.  For one, music is learned through many of the same processes as language.  When someone is in the process of learning new music, they practice sounding out the words while listening to the distinct tones.  Furthermore, repetition is a very effective way to learn music and memorize it.  As well all know, repetition is beneficial to us when we are trying to learn a new word or memorize a phrase.  In these specific ways, I would definitely consider music a language. Also, unlike any other language, music is universal.  I remember countless times at concerts singing and dancing to the same song as people from all over the...

Natural History of the Senses- TASTE When thinking about taste, it is important to realize that not only do we experience taste differently then other humans, but other species and organisms as well.  According to the text, adults have 10,000 taste buds that are grouped by theme (salt, sour, sweet, bitter).  These are located at various different places in the mouth. Also, inside each taste bud are about fifty taste cells that are relaying information to other neurons in the brain.  Not much of the taste happens in the tongue like we often think it does.  Rather there are taste buds responsible for this that are located on the palate, pharynx, and tonsils.  Compared to humans, rabbits have 17,000 taste buds while parrots have only a mere 400.  Therefore, their brains and taste buds interpret taste differently and thus have entirely different experiences when it comes to food. As humans our taste buds are capable of undergoing drastic...

Natural History of the Senses- TOUCH “At Purdue University, a woman librarian goes about her business, checking out people’s books.  She is part of an experiment in subliminal touch, and knows that half the time she is to do nothing special, the other half to touch people as insignificantly as possible.  She brushes a student’s hand lightly as she returns a library card.  Then the student is followed outside and asked to fill out a questionnaire about the library that day.” Studies of subliminal messaging have been increasing in the last few decades or so.  Many examples of this style of message have been used in social and mainstream media.  When George Bush was running for president, one of his campaign ads flashed the word “rats” across the screen as Al Gore’s name and organization were being discussed.  In many popular songs and music videos, the “illuminati triangle” is flashed quickly and can be caught on film if you pause the ...

Natural History of Senses- SYNESTHESIA At the end of A Natural History of the Senses, there is a chapter about synesthesia that was very interesting.  It started off by explaining the symptoms that a boy with the disorder experienced.  “His world smells to him much as our world smells to us, but he does not perceive odors as coming through his nose alone.  He hears odors, and sees odors, and feels them too.  His world is a melee of pungent aromas-and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights, and sour-smelling pressures against the skin.”  Of course it is hard to visually perceive what it would be like to have synesthesia since it is nothing like the way the brain works for those without the disorder.  People with synesthesia experience stimulation of one sensory pathway that leads to automatic experiences in a secondary sensory pathway. The other day I was watching a documentary on savants, people with ...

Natural History of Senses- SMELL In the section of the book about smell there were a few paragraphs describing smell as the fallen angel.  We know that our sense of smell is able to spur memories, rouse our other senses, and help define our self-image.  Although it is highly subjective, it is clear to many of us that our sense of smell is much less of a priority then things like vision, or sound.  We love to smell our favorite foods when they are being cooked prior to dinnertime.  We love to open our windows on a summer day and smell the fresh air outside.  Of course, there are many things that we adore, as well as dislike, smelling.  Our individual preferences to certain smells can have direct effects on the experiences we will have when we are presented with those scents.  In the same way, when we smell scents that we dislike this can negatively affect our subjective experience compared to someone who may have different odor p...

The chapters about vision and light were very interesting.  The author explains how when light hits a car, our eyes see the reflection of the light of the object you are looking at.  Therefore a red car is anything and everything but red.  Light has major influences on our health and mood.  Light also determines our sleep cycles and circadian rhythms.  Light therapy can also be used to cure types of cancer and schizophrenia.  Light and color are not physical, making them a very interesting subjective experience to further enhance our consciousness. Color can have impacts on our mood, change our heart rate, and can even have biological and evolutionary advantages. After taking many religion courses and learning about many religions and the idea of consciousness in general, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and researching observation, the illusion of light, and consciousness.  For instance, from a scientific standpoint, all matter is broken...