Introduction

In the nineteenth century, a distinction was commonly made between the “higher” senses, vision and audition, and the “lower” senses, touch, taste, and smell. In an age in which, at least in the Western world, faith in science and technological progress was almost absolute and bodily pleasures were viewed with suspicion, the senses of the intellect seemed to score a moral triumph over the senses of the body. Or was there more to the distinction than that? Are the two types of senses indeed different? And can they even today be grouped as they were then, but on more objective grounds?

Vision and hearing are involved in such vital human activities as spatial orientation (distance and depth perception, direction perception for sound sources, equilibrium) and communication (hearing, speaking and reading language, perception of body language, imitation of expressions and gestures). Furthermore, vision plays a very important role in form perception and in gross and fine manipulation of objects.

Finally, vision and hearing are the vehicles of the arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, music, theatre, cinema, and photography). Compared with that, touch, kinesthesia, taste, and olfaction can show only lesser glories (perfumery and cooking, and, to a certain extent and only in combination with vision, pottery, sculpture, dance, and pantomime). They also seem rather subjective and less universal – more related to feelings and emotions than to thoughts and decisions. What, then, are the advantages of having these senses? And what are their characteristics?