All human cultures recognize the same five traditional senses
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REFUTED
the evidence says no
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Evidence indicates that the concept of the five traditional senses originates historically from Aristotle's works rather than being a universal feature recognized across all human cultures, with anthropological and scientific literature demonstrating alternative sensory models and additional sensory modalities.
This historical review on the semantic evolution of human senses and sensors revealed that Aristotle's list of the five senses sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell is still in use among non-scientific lay persons. It is no surprise that his classification in the work "De Anima" (On the Soul) from 350 BC confuses the sensor "touch" with the now more comprehensively defined somatosensory system and that senses are missing such as the later discovered vestibular system and the musculotendinous proprioception of the position of parts of the body in space. However, it is surprising that in the three most influential ancient cultures, Egypt, Greece, and China-which shaped the history of civilization-the concept prevailed that the heart rather than the brain processes perception, cognition, and emotions. This "cardiocentric view" can be traced back to the "Doctrine of Aristotle," the "Book of the Dead" in ancient Egypt, and the traditional Chinese medicine of correspondence documented in the book "Huang di Neijing." In Greek antiquity the philosophers Empedocles, Democritus and Aristotle were proponents of the allocation of the spirit and the soul to the heart connected to the body via the blood vessels. Opponents were the pre-Socratic mathematician Pythagoras, the philosopher Plato, and especially the Greek physician Hippocrates who regarded the brain as the most powerful organ in humans in his work "De Morbo Sacro." The Greek physician Galen of Pergamon further elaborated on the concept of the brain ("cephalocentric hypothesis") connected to the body by a network of nerves. The fundamental concepts for understanding functions and disorders of the vestibular system, the perception of self-motion, verticality and balance control were laid by a remarkable group of 19th century scientists including Purkynӗ, Mach, Breuer, Helmholtz, and Crum-Brown. It was also in the 19th century that Bell described a new sense of a reciprocal sensorimotor loop between the brain and the muscles which he called "muscular sense," later termed "kinaesthesia" by Bastian and defined in 1906 as "proprioception" by Sherrington as "the perception of joint and body movements as well as position of the body or body segments, in space." Both, the vestibular system and proprioception could be acknowledged as senses six or seven. However, we hesitate to recommend "pain"-which is variously assigned to the somatosensory system or extero-, intero-, visceroception-as a separate sensory system. Pain sensors are often not specific but have multisensory functions. Because of this inconsistent, partly contradictory classification even by experts in the current literature on senses and sensors we consider it justified to recommend a comprehensive reorganization of classification features according to the present state of knowledge with an expansion of the number of senses. Such a project has also to include the frequent task-dependent multisensory interactions for perceptual and sensorimotor achievements, and higher functions or disorders of the visual and vestibular systems as soon as cognition or emotions come into play. This requires a cooperation of sensory physiologists, neuroscientists and experienced physicians involved in the management of patients with sensory and multisensory disorders.
The chemical senses are taste and smell. The general sense that is usually referred to as touch includes chemical sensation in the form of nociception, or pain. Pressure, vibration, muscle stretch, and the movement of hair by an external stimulus, are all sensed by mechanoreceptors. Hearing and balance are also sensed by mechanoreceptors. Finally, vision involves the activation of photoreceptors. Listing all the different sensory modalities, which can number as many as 17, involves separating the five major senses into more specific categories, or submodalities, of the larger sense. An individual sensory modality represents the sensation of a specific type of stimulus. For example, the general sense of touch, which is known as somatosensation, can be separated into light pressure, deep pressure, vibration, itch, pain, temperature, or hair movement. Only a few recognized submodalities exist within the sense of taste, or gustation. Until recently, only four tastes were recognized: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Research at the turn of the 20th century led to recognition of the fifth taste, umami, during the mid-1980s.
that of the senses and the organs of sense. As yet we do not know how many special senses we possess. To the traditional five are now added the muscular
Toward an African sensory psychology: The Senses and Society: Vol 20, No 2
## ABSTRACT
A West African cultural psychology supports an understanding of “the bodymind” that diverges from that of mainstream Western psychology and neuroscience. In stark contrast to the neurological reductionism of the latter, an Aŋlɔ-Eʋe cultural model of “how we know what we know” is rooted in their phrase seselelãme which encompasses more than the canonical five modalities. My observant participation in the 1990s involved “coming to be of two sensoria”, intent listening for sensory-rich language and remarks, and interviews about ethnopsychological phenomena. But I lacked the neat rubric of “sensation schemas, sensation interpretants, and sensation scripts” that we now possess as part of our toolkit for a “medical anthropology of sensations”. None the less, my Aŋlɔ colleagues and I constructed their sensorium and demonstrated how it informs child rearing practices, cosmological beliefs, illness and health. This article argues for the integral relationship between a sensorium and ethnopsychology, thereby underscoring the vital need to include consideration of Global South sociabilities and epistemolo
lar system and proprioception could be acknowledged as senses six or seven. However, we hesitate to recommend “pain”—which is variously assigned to the somatosensory system or extero-, intero-, visceroception—as a separate sensory system. Pain sensors are often not specific but have multisensory functions. Because of this inconsistent, partly contradictory classification even by experts in the current literature on senses and sensors we consider it justified to recommend a comprehensive reorganization of classification features according to the present state of knowledge with an expansion of the number of senses. Such a project has also to include the frequent task-dependent multisensory interactions for perceptual and sensorimotor achievements, and higher functions or disorders of the visual and vestibular systems as soon as cognition or emotions come into play. This requires a cooperation of sensory physiologists, neuroscientists and experienced physicians involved in the management of patients with sensory and multisensory disorders.
Keywords: Aristotle, sensory systems, sensory receptors, vestibular system, proprioception, history of perception 1. Introduction
The historical debate on the number of human sensory systems—five, six, or seven—is still alive. It was Aristotle (384–322 BC), a Greek universal scholar, who first listed five senses “sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell” in his seminal work “De Anima” ( 1 ). A sixth sense was proposed by the Scottish physiologist and anatomist Charles Bell (1774–1842) as the “muscular sense,” which was later termed “proprioception” by the English neurophysiologist Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952). Proprioception means awareness of the position or movement of the body or parts of the body relative to each other ( 2 ). Both concepts did not yet refer to vestibular labyrinthine function, which was just discovered around the same time in the 19th century. Current classifications by physiologists and physicians are of
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