The Cultural Senses of Homo Sapiens

Humans are a curious mix of biology and culture, and one interaction area between these two that has recently come into focus is located in the senses, our biological apparatus to connect with the world. In this essay, I address the variation in appreciation of the senses in various cultures, both historical and contemporaneous, in order to explore the extent to which culture steers not only our observations, but also our appreciation of the epistemological weight of those senses. I concentrate on three senses—vision, hearing, and smell—and show how the relative weight attributed to each of them shifts in different cultures or historical periods. Using data from anthropology, history, literature, psychology, and linguistics, I argue that vision, sound, and smell occupy different positions in various cultures, and that our sensory balance shifts with culture. Thus, our present epistemological dominance of sight over all other senses is neither a biological given nor a cultural necessity.