Too many befuddled and superstitious individuals are constantly on the lookout for a suggestion of a 'sixth sense' - and this 'holy grail' is apparently some kind of explanatory principle for 'wild talents', anomalous occurences, miraculous apparitions of the virgin on pancakes etc. which would - if ever identified as a fact, re-establish the authority of the spirit (holy or otherwise) over scientific knowledge. That'll teach those arrogant fools in white coats. Bring back the guys in the luxurious robes!
These folks are so eager to believe that this apparatus exists, that they are quite uninterested in where it might be located in the organism, or how it might work.
Also, I detect a tacit lingering dread that such a discovery would, if made by bona fide scientists - checked and with all its phenomena reproduced in laboratories using formal experiment - somehow cheapen the whole business of 'religion' or 'spirituality', and we would all have to go hunting for some other bit of hocus pocus instead, just to retain our divine fuzzy feelings. Still they seek to 'prove' that there are such 'things' as auras, while fleeing from any attempt to understand what kind of knowledge a 'proof' really is.
Typically, these people are not doing their research very well. Years ago, Rudolf Steiner identified not one extra sense, but seven - making a grand total of twelve. No hocus pocus here:
- Sense of Touch. (The skin is the largest organ in the body, but you also feel your food moving in your gut. See next item.)
- Sense of Life ...and therefore also the sense of death - the threshold between the two is Ernst Jentsch's "uncanny" or Masahiro Mori's "uncanny valley". Having mentioned food in the gut, many of us can sense the release of nutritious matter into the bloodstream, a 'sugar rush', the hunger/satisfaction cycle etc. which is all experienced by sensory apparatus too. 'Metabolism' by the way is one of the requirements for defining living things, according to many biologists. (Viruses are usually not considered truly 'alive' because they do not metabolise anything).
- Sense of Self-Movement (Also motivation in general: Drive, goal orientation etc. Those dishes aren't going to wash themselves.)
- Sense of Balance - Located in the ears, not just because of their convenient position, but also related to orientation, rhythm, dance, gravity, even somehow to acoustics and spatial awareness etc.
- Sense of smell (Many have remarked on the peculiar relationship of smell to memory. How do dogs remember people, do you think?)
- Sense of Taste (similar to smell, it has connections with memory, taste is strongly affected by smell and by texture. Cinnamon, for example, has no taste at all, but is considered to improve flavour).
- Sense of Sight ...gets most of the attention in our culture. I am rather tired of its predominance and its cheap, easy glamour, but there are a few points of interest. The assymmetric relationship between rod and cone cells remains curious: Van Gogh was fascinated by the way colour perception is affected in low-light conditions, and attempted to capture this on canvas. So how well-lit should his paintings actually be? (Epistemological puzzle).
- Sense of Temperature/Warmth - Those who live in temperate zones, are most likely attuned to this differently from those from the tropics. The latter most likely have an equally well developed 'sense of humidity'. This is actually the proverbial 'multiple Eskimo names for snow' thing. English itself has about a dozen words for frozen water in different states. "The most significant aspect of any sculpture is its temperature." as Joseph Beuys put it.
- Sense of Hearing. The only one that gets much attention after sight. You can't turn it off, you must filter it instead, using entirely unconscious processes! Again, rhythm and acoustics have an important role to play. Play on!
- Sense of Language (understanding, communication, formal pattern - and also general semantics, but as semantics becomes less general we have...)
- Sense of Concept (boundaries and classes, one of my favorite topics. I am 'class conscious'!)
- Sense of Ego (i.e. 'self' or identity - aummmm - I am one with the blog editor. See 'unity' below)
OK, you might think Rudolf was cheating. Some of these 'senses' seem to overlap, some of them appear to draw only upon the neural input of the classic 'five senses' we were taught at school, but that is not the point. The point is that we develop a 'sensibility' for all of these things through many and various sense organs, some of which, like the ability to sense blood sugar levels, are located in the brain, and for most people, entirely unconscious. Still I believe a child who has had too much cola is experiencing something 'different', which the soft drinks companies like to celebrate and promote. Another epistemological puzzle then: Is a wholly unconscious sense a 'true' sense?
With this in mind, I thought I might add a few more to Steiner's wonderful list:
- Sense of order (and by extension, clean/dirty, sequence/disorder, justice/revenge)
- Sense of belonging (home, family, nationalism, territory, sometimes combined with the sense of order, and a strong sense of motivation, then elevated above all else, with unfortunate consequences that we might call 'fascism')
- Sense of occasion (social intelligence?)
- Sense of completeness/unity/wholeness. (We have to collect the WHOLE SET of these cheap plastic trinkets to make our lives more meaningful. Confluence. Togetherness (see 'Sense of Belonging', above). The ultimate gestalt: God?)
- Sense of humour (nothing funny to add here, I am afraid - ah isn't this something to do with fear, actually? The smile is a modified simian fear signal. Say cheese or I'll eat YOU).
any more?
