The scrupulous 3-dimension world we humans inhabit is in fact biological, not physical, in origin. Its limitations are determined by our specific sensory, motor and mental apparatus and abilities. It only hints at the real world, and while doing so it combines some highly erroneous observations as well. Molluscs and insects and arachnids all have a very different perspective of their environment. We would find discomfort in the world view of an octopus, as we do in the quantum world view.[1][2]
Dimension is a term laymen toss about haphazardly. Mathematicians and physicists have a more precise interpretation concerning dimension. For them, any independent parameter constitutes a separate dimension. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, what if anything can truly be separate and independent? Those are both relative terms. Nothing that exists is really fully isolate and independent. That is one of the substratal premises from which mandalic geometry evolves: relationships invariably exist. And relationships can always change. Mandalic geometry therefore is a geometry of process - a spacetime geometry, not one of space alone.
For those who created the primal I Ching relationship was considered a fundamental aspect of reality. When they thought of dimension - - - and they did, in their own way - - - relationships were always involved. Flash-forward a few thousand years - quantum mechanics accomplishes much the same with its view of interacting particles in continual motion, ever-changing, and incessantly forging transient effective links with numerous other particles of similar and different type under the influence of various fields of force.
Kant thought that human concepts and categories determine our view of the world and its laws. He held that inborn features of our minds structure our experiences. Since, in his view, mind shapes and structures experience, at some level of representation all human experience shares certain essential operational features. Among these according to Kant are our concepts relating to space and time, integral to all human experience. The same might be said about our concepts of cause and effect.
Kant further asserts that we never have direct experience of things, referred to in his writings as the noumenal world. All we experience is the phenomenal world that is relayed to us by our senses. Kant views noumena as the thing-in-itself or true reality and phenomena as our experience or perception of that thing, filtered through our senses and reasoning. According to Kant science can be applied only to things that can be observed and studied. The entire world of noumena is beyond the scope and reach of science. As an heir to Enlightenment philosophy Kant respects the value of reason but believes the noumenal world to be beyond its scope and reach. So are we fated then never to experience the noumena directly? Not by a long shot. Kant claims the noumena to be accessible but only by intellectual intuition without the aid of reason.[3]
In the world of phenomena nothing is self-existent. Everything exists by virtue of dependence on something else. Point to something, anything at all, that refutes that view and I’ll tell you you’re out of your mind - and in the noumenal world. What, pray tell, are you doing there and how did you get there anyway? If you can clearly communicate the how I may give it a try myself.[4]
[1] The world view granted us by our inherited biologic capacities has been millions of years in the making. Indeed. But that makes it still not a whit truer than had we groped it only yesterday. Evolution seems to have sacrificed a full immersive sense of reality to grant a greater degree of interoperability essential to dealing with vicissitudes of a material world and confer durability within that domain. The quest after true apprehension we feel impelled to pursue is a siren not without danger.
“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live.” -Nisargadatta Maharaj
[2] Regarding the origin and transformations of the word “scrupulous”:
Scrupulous and its close relative “scruple” (“an ethical consideration”) come from the Latin noun scrupulus, the diminutive of “scrupus.” “Scrupus” refers to a sharp stone, so scrupulus means “small sharp stone.” “Scrupus” retained its literal meaning but eventually also came to be used with the metaphorical meaning “a source of anxiety or uneasiness,” the way a sharp pebble in one’s shoe would be a source of pain. When the adjective “scrupulous” entered the language in the 15th century, it meant “principled.” Now it also commonly means "painstaking" or “careful.” [Source]
Sad to say, this fascinating word that so successfully wended its way through several related incarnations in a number of different Indo-European languages prior to its appearance in English, c.15th century, appears to be passing out of usage among English speakers in modern times. We will likely be left with the occasional utterance of “scruples” but “scrupulous” itself seems destined for oblivion.
Curiously, my election of the word here was not rationally motivated. As I was framing the thought expressed in the paragraph in my mind, the word just appeared out of nowhere and seemed to insist, “I belong here though you may not yet understand why. You really need a word with my complex heritage of multiple meanings here.” And so I went with it, not fully knowing why. Funny thing about it, my rational mind is quite unable now to come up with any other single word that suits as well.
[3] Kant’s epistemology recognizes three different sources of knowlege: sensory experience, reason, and intuition. He views intuition as independent of the other two and the only one of the three with direct access to the world of noumena. This may present as suspect at first, but then how do we explain things like what Einstein did a century ago? Einstein himself has hinted in his writings at the essential role of intuition and imagination in his thinking.
Clickhere for more slides on Kant’s philosophy by William Parkhurst from Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 13, source of the above slide reproduction.
[4] Our human penchant for categorization inevitably leads to dismemberment of holistic reality into an endless number of manifest objects, many of which we no longer recognize as essentially related.
“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” -Thích Nhất Hạnh
Please note: The content and/or format of this post may not be in finalized form. Reblog as a TEXT post will contain this caveat alerting readers to refer to the current version in the source blog. A LINK post will itself do the same. :)
Scroll to bottom for links to Previous / Next pages (if existent). This blog builds on what came before so the best way to follow it is chronologically. Tumblr doesn’t make that easy to do. Since the most recent page is reckoned as Page 1 the number of the actual Page 1 continually changes as new posts are added. To determine the number currently needed to locate Page 1 go to the most recent post which is here. The current total number of pages in the blog will be found at the bottom. The true Page 1 can be reached by changing the web address mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com to mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com/page/x, exchanging my current page number for x and entering. To find a different true page(p) subtract p from x+1 to get the number(n) to use. Place n in the URL instead of x (mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com/page/n) where n = x + 1 - p. :)
Characters with extraordinary senses come up a lot. Maybe your character is of supernatural or alien origin, or maybe they were just born with a genetic quirk. Maybe they have a sensory disorder that only makes their hearing seem extraordinary. There are lots of reasons why a character might have extraordinary senses and a lot of different ways those senses might be put to use, but here are some of the drawbacks you might consider when writing a character who has a super sniffer, excellent eyesight, or high-quality hearing!
Sight: If your character has super sight, chances are that they can see farther and more clearly than anybody else, which is pretty cool except that the human eye can still only really focus on one thing at a time…so your character might want to be careful not to get distracted when they’re, say, crossing the street. If they’re watching a burglary occur a thousand yards away, they might not notice the car that just whipped around the corner behind them. Other super-drawbacks might include heightened sensitivity to light, color, or movement - and you have to remember that nobody can see three-hundred-sixty degrees at all times, so your character is probably going to have a blind spot (unless they’re an owl). Also, they may frequently look like they’re staring off into space when they’re really just watching something very intently.
Hearing: Have you ever been standing in a crowd of people who are all talking at the same time? Now imagine if you had super hearing! It can be hard to pick out individual pieces of information or even follow a single conversation when you can hear everyone in a six-block radius…and it’s not just conversations. You can also hear every car, every pet moving around, every jingle of a key, the air moving through the vents, and so on and so forth. This is another one of those abilities that may make it look like your character is just really easily distracted - it’s not that they don’t want to pay attention to their friends, it’s just that they’re playing “name that tune” with a radio four blocks to the southeast!
Smell: Think about your shower routine, whatever it might be. How many scented products do you layer on your skin? Soap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, deoderant, maybe perfume or cologne, shaving cream or aftershave - the list goes on and on. If you had a super nose, you might be able to smell every single layer a person was wearing, and that kind of assault on the nose could be eye-wateringly overwhelming. Consider your reaction to someone wearing strong perfume! There are a lot of other types of smells in the world too, from cut grass and shoe polish to rotting garbage…and a lot of bodily functions have smells too: passing gas, excrement, or urine, menstruation, or sweating, for example. Your character might even be able to smell disease. This type of character might have to wear a mask or a scarf over their face to dull their super-sense, which might give them an odd appearance, but just imagine how much weirder it would look to be standing on a street corner sniffing at the air when all anyone else can smell is car fumes.
Taste: What’s the strongest flavor you’ve ever tasted? Maybe it was something fishy, or spicy, or sour. Everyone’s answer is bound to be different, but imagine if every single thing you ever ate or drank tasted that strong. Eventually you might get kind of tired of it and start preparing food that is more bland, right? Alternately, imagine if nothing ever just tasted like itself to you: you’re eating a french fry, but instead of tasting “french fry” you’re tasting potato, salt, oil, the metal of the fryer, the latex in the gloves used to scoop them into the paper tray, the paper tray itself…that would be pretty overwhelming! The major drawback to super taste is that your character might have trouble eating out or eating in front of other people. When you taste a lemon, your face puckers up…just think of how much more sour it would taste with a super tongue!
Touch: Did you know that every day you suffer a million tiny hurts and your brain just ignores them so that you can keep on functioning normally? If you had an enhanced nervous system, that might not be the case. Think about the number of tiny things we ignore every day: actions like walking, scratching, accidentally biting your tongue, or blinking could hurt pretty bad if you were super sensitive to touch! People with super touch might have a hard time getting comfortable all the time, and they might have to deal with not liking the feeling of clothes, being annoyed with air moving over their skin, or being extra-sensitive to physical contact. If a hug felt to me like someone was trying to break my ribs, I’d avoid them too!
So what are some things to keep in mind when writing about characters with extraordinary senses, other than drawbacks? Here are some things to consider:
Set limits. Your character shouldn’t be able to see past the curve of the earth - that’s just silly! Likewise, if they can hear something happening through the entire planet, you may want to rethink. Consider things like range and clarity when you’re setting limits on super senses: how far away can they see things and how clearly can they see them, for example. When it comes to touch, this is a little more tricky, and you might want to think more about the direct effects of pressure on the character: how much pressure does it take before it hurts?
Enhanced senses require enhanced brainpower. I don’t mean that they raise your character’s IQ level, but consider how much effort it takes to sort through and process sensory information. If your character’s brain can’t handle it, they might be in a constant state of sensory overload.
Speaking of sensory overload, that might happen to your character sometimes anyway! Everyone faces extreme situations in their lives where their brains just can’t keep up with the workload, and the threshold for that point is probably lower for people with super senses. If you’ve got a character with super hearing and four people are trying to talk to them at once, they might experience sensory overload and have to go recover for a while, so do your research into sensory overload and what to do to help them.
Finally, their super sense is going to impact how they experience and relate to other people. Maybe your character doesn’t remember a person’s name or face but they’ll never forget her voice. Maybe they just can’t even be in the house with Great-Aunt Helen because she always wears the same musty old perfume and it gives your character a headache. Maybe your character appears to be constantly zoning out when really they’re just looking closely at peoples’ jewelry. How your character perceives others, and how others view your character, is going to be impacted by their ability - count on it.
If you’re writing about a character with super senses, I hope that this has been helpful and maybe even inspiring to you, and I’d love to hear your thoughts too! Thanks for reading, and good luck!
“My sight and hearing were always extraordinary. I could clearly discern objects in the distance when others saw no trace of them. Several times in my boyhood I saved the houses of our neighbors from fire by hearing the faint crackling sounds which did not disturb their sleep, and calling for help. In 1899, when I was past 40 and carrying on my experiments in Colorado, I could hear very distinctly thunderclaps at a distance of 550 miles. The limit of audition for my young assistants was scarcely more than 150 miles. My ear was thus over thirteen times more sensitive. Yet at that time I was, so to speak, stone deaf in comparison with the acuteness of my hearing while under the nervous strain. In Budapest I could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between me and the time-piece. A fly alighting on a table in the room would cause a dull thud in my ear. A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body. The whistle of a locomotive 20 or 30 miles away made the bench or chair on which I sat vibrate so strongly that the pain was unbearable. The ground under my feet trembled continuously. I had to support my bed on rubber cushions to get any rest at all. The roaring noises from near and far often produced the effect of spoken words which would have frightened me had I not been able to resolve them into their accidental components. The sun’s rays, when periodically intercepted, would cause blows of such force on my brain that they would stun me. I had to summon all my will power to pass under a bridge or other structure as I experienced a crushing pressure on the skull. In the dark I had the sense of a bat and could detect the presence of an object at a distance of 12 feet by a peculiar creepy sensation on the forehead. My pulse varied from a few to 260 beats and all the tissues of the body quivered with twitches and tremors which was perhaps the hardest to bear.”
–Nikola Tesla
“My Inventions V – My Later Endeavors.”Electrical Experimenter, February, 1919.
✨T C S ✨ The 8 clairs includes any or all types of psychic sensitivity corresponding to the senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, touching, emotions.
You might already have noticed one or two of these traits within yourself. Most people have a strong connection to one or two of these senses.
Adoras aquellas cosas extrañas, innovadoras, delicadas… Parece que las notas están escritas sobre pétalos de rosa o la arena del fondo marino. Tan trémulo, fino y relajante.
Vienen a mi cabeza las ondas que crea una piedra al ser lanzada al agua, que van desvaneciéndose hasta desaparecer. Cuando quiero tranquilizarme, me gusta pensar que mis problemas y agobios están en esa piedra y que al depositarse en mi interior, van desapareciendo poco a poco, sin causar ningún daño. Apenas una ondulación…
Vienen a mi las caracolas y el rugido del mar al chocar con los acantilados. Una ballena asomándose en la superficie marina, el olor a sal…
Es increíble como las palabras pueden cambiar el destinatario que, aunque secreto, brillaba en mi mente como un faro en la noche.
Caballero…
Sirena…
Encerraré mi mensaje en una botella y lo lanzaré lejos, esperando que las manos de una criatura mitológica lo alcancen y canten. Voces de antigua seducción que se pierden en la corriente. Creencias olvidadas…
Cuan extrañas pueden ser las palabras que no se comprenden. ¿Qué estarán diciendo? ¿Qué estaré diciendo? Ni yo lo sé ahora mismo, la coherencia y el sentido común parecen abandonarme a la par que la música avanza. Las trompas crean extrañas armonías en sus glisandos. Las tubas arañan el fondo marino, los bombardinos gimen de dolor… Todo se va perdiendo, en un eterno silencio.
De repente, una cajita de música viene a mi memoria para más de repente aún, desaparecer.
Los muertos aúllan, revolotean a mi alrededor. Tempus fugit, parecen gritar. Sus lamentos arrancan notas quebradizas a las cuerdas, hasta que el sonorotic tac de los timbales vuelve a poner en marcha el reloj, en su tempo, la orquesta sigue el rumbo…
Whalesong.
Cuatro vieiras me separan del final… Abandono mi rumbo, no quiero recorrerlas. No todavía.
Puedo esperar.
Cajas de música, leyendas del lejano oriente, armonías olvidadas, cantos antiguos como el tiempo, enarmonías, silencios…
Agua, mucha agua.
La caza. Todo es caos, dolor y sufrimiento, intento avanzar en un confuso vaivén hasta tropezar con mis inseguridades. Quieren tirar de mi y arrastrarme al fondo marino, al… ¿abismo?
Rope has a memory. To taste it was to be told a story, and this time that was a story mostly about him. As it chafed against the corners of her mouth, ran her tongue over the fibres and squirmed, a worm in the sun, she listened.
There were frays where he’d tied it in knots, the constriction forcing it to start to break down. The faint flavour of wax from that time he’d pulled the candles out of the cupboard, and she’d very nearly decided to run away. The musk of leather, crawling out of her stuffed mouth and up her nose. He wore gloves, sometimes. It made him look like a hitman. The danger thrilled her.
And then there were the bits of him. His cologne. The rope itself, chosen by him, something somewhere between thick and cutting, coarse and tight. But most of all, the overriding taste that was the narrative backbone of this story, was his actuality, the sweat from his palms that had soaked into the rope, permeated it.
Anyone else would recoil from it, she was more than sure. Repulsion would well up in their throat like bile, and they’d cast the rope from their mouth, or pull and tug at it desperately if their hands were free. She was not anyone else. She was the person who found that taste an aphrodisiac, the salty musk playing on her tongue like the finest wine. It overwhelmed her. She was lost in it.
Thegreat white shark is supremely adapted to finding and hunting prey. Specialised sensory organs called the ampullae of Lorenzini allow the sharks to detect the electromagnetic fields given off by living organisms. Their sense of smell is so acute that they can detect a single drop of blood in over 25 gallons of water, and smell blood in the water from a distance of five miles away. Their eyes are also adapted to seeing in dim and murky water. All of this makes the great white shark a phenomenally efficient predator.
The scrupulous 3-dimension world we humans inhabit is in fact biological, not physical, in origin. Its limitations are determined by our specific sensory, motor and mental apparatus and abilities. It only hints at the real world, and while doing so it combines some highly erroneous observations as well. Molluscs and insects and arachnids all have a very different perspective of their environment. We would find discomfort in the world view of an octopus, as we do in the quantum world view.[1][2]
Dimension is a term laymen toss about haphazardly. Mathematicians and physicists have a more precise interpretation concerning dimension. For them, any independent parameter constitutes a separate dimension. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, what if anything can truly be separate and independent? Those are both relative terms. Nothing that exists is really fully isolate and independent. That is one of the substratal premises from which mandalic geometry evolves: relationships invariably exist. And relationships can always change. Mandalic geometry therefore is a geometry of process - a spacetime geometry, not one of space alone.
For those who created the primal I Ching relationship was considered a fundamental aspect of reality. When they thought of dimension - - - and they did, in their own way - - - relationships were always involved. Flash-forward a few thousand years - quantum mechanics accomplishes much the same with its view of interacting particles in continual motion, ever-changing, and incessantly forging transient effective links with numerous other particles of similar and different type under the influence of various fields of force.
Kant thought that human concepts and categories determine our view of the world and its laws. He held that inborn features of our minds structure our experiences. Since, in his view, mind shapes and structures experience, at some level of representation all human experience shares certain essential operational features. Among these according to Kant are our concepts relating to space and time, integral to all human experience. The same might be said about our concepts of cause and effect.
Kant further asserts that we never have direct experience of things, referred to in his writings as the noumenal world. All we experience is the phenomenal world that is relayed to us by our senses. Kant views noumena as the thing-in-itself or true reality and phenomena as our experience or perception of that thing, filtered through our senses and reasoning. According to Kant science can be applied only to things that can be observed and studied. The entire world of noumena is beyond the scope and reach of science. As an heir to Enlightenment philosophy Kant respects the value of reason but believes the noumenal world to be beyond its scope and reach. So are we fated then never to experience the noumena directly? Not by a long shot. Kant claims the noumena to be accessible but only by intellectual intuition without the aid of reason.[3]
In the world of phenomena nothing is self-existent. Everything exists by virtue of dependence on something else. Point to something, anything at all, that refutes that view and I’ll tell you you’re out of your mind - and in the noumenal world. What, pray tell, are you doing there and how did you get there anyway? If you can clearly communicate the how I may give it a try myself.[4]
[1] The world view granted us by our inherited biologic capacities has been millions of years in the making. Indeed. But that makes it still not a whit truer than had we groped it only yesterday. Evolution seems to have sacrificed a full immersive sense of reality to grant a greater degree of interoperability essential to dealing with vicissitudes of a material world and confer durability within that domain. The quest after true apprehension we feel impelled to pursue is a siren not without danger.
“The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live.” -Nisargadatta Maharaj
[2] Regarding the origin and transformations of the word “scrupulous”:
Scrupulous and its close relative “scruple” (“an ethical consideration”) come from the Latin noun scrupulus, the diminutive of “scrupus.” “Scrupus” refers to a sharp stone, so scrupulus means “small sharp stone.” “Scrupus” retained its literal meaning but eventually also came to be used with the metaphorical meaning “a source of anxiety or uneasiness,” the way a sharp pebble in one’s shoe would be a source of pain. When the adjective “scrupulous” entered the language in the 15th century, it meant “principled.” Now it also commonly means "painstaking" or “careful.” [Source]
Sad to say, this fascinating word that so successfully wended its way through several related incarnations in a number of different Indo-European languages prior to its appearance in English, c.15th century, appears to be passing out of usage among English speakers in modern times. We will likely be left with the occasional utterance of “scruples” but “scrupulous” itself seems destined for oblivion.
Curiously, my election of the word here was not rationally motivated. As I was framing the thought expressed in the paragraph in my mind, the word just appeared out of nowhere and seemed to insist, “I belong here though you may not yet understand why. You really need a word with my complex heritage of multiple meanings here.” And so I went with it, not fully knowing why. Funny thing about it, my rational mind is quite unable now to come up with any other single word that suits as well.
[3] Kant’s epistemology recognizes three different sources of knowlege: sensory experience, reason, and intuition. He views intuition as independent of the other two and the only one of the three with direct access to the world of noumena. This may present as suspect at first, but then how do we explain things like what Einstein did a century ago? Einstein himself has hinted in his writings at the essential role of intuition and imagination in his thinking.
Clickhere for more slides on Kant’s philosophy by William Parkhurst from Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 13, source of the above slide reproduction.
[4] Our human penchant for categorization inevitably leads to dismemberment of holistic reality into an endless number of manifest objects, many of which we no longer recognize as essentially related.
“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” -Thích Nhất Hạnh
Please note: The content and/or format of this post may not be in finalized form. Reblog as a TEXT post will contain this caveat alerting readers to refer to the current version in the source blog. A LINK post will itself do the same. :)
Scroll to bottom for links to Previous / Next pages (if existent). This blog builds on what came before so the best way to follow it is chronologically. Tumblr doesn’t make that easy to do. Since the most recent page is reckoned as Page 1 the number of the actual Page 1 continually changes as new posts are added. To determine the number currently needed to locate Page 1 go to the most recent post which is here. The current total number of pages in the blog will be found at the bottom. The true Page 1 can be reached by changing the web address mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com to mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com/page/x, exchanging my current page number for x and entering. To find a different true page(p) subtract p from x+1 to get the number(n) to use. Place n in the URL instead of x (mandalicgeometry.tumblr.com/page/n) where n = x + 1 - p. :)
Rain Sticks are being created. These are very popular and are great for soothing and calming. #rainsticks #spirituality #nativeamerican #calming #senses #dazspellcreations
With Monday came fall – though the stores would have one believe it’s time to herald in Christmas…I mean don’t get me wrong I love me some Christmas, but I also love me some Halloween.
I love the atmospheric resonance of all things fall. The rainy days, the crunchy leaves, the vibrant last burst of life reaching peek. I love the haunting mood that’s invoked with the…
Reality can’t be proven to exist outside of our ability to perceive it through our senses but our senses can’t be trusted so basically nothing is real do what you want
If you think about it just a bit too much like I did, you’ll reach the conclusion that nothing really tastes, sounds, looks, feels or smells. It’s just your brain’s interpretation of chemical composition, vibrations, the way things reflect light, more vibrations and chemical composition again
Do u ever think about how dogs, who have 2 colour receptors, see an apple as grayish yellow, while humans have 3 and see it as red, and mantis shrimp have 12, and see it another monstrous colour altogether?
How none of us are necessarily correct,and the apple itself, is not really any colour, it’s just a fruit minding its own goddamn business??
How many heroes or villains have you encountered in books, comics, or films who couldn’t feel pain? Ever read a story with a character who is cursed with an odd hunger they must satisfy to retain their sanity? Unique or unconventional senses, attributes, or neurobiological mechanisms can punch-up an already, curiously assembled character. Readers and writers of sci-fi and fantasy know this well. But when starting from scratch, or seeking to craft something distinctive, one might view the expanse of published literature and feel like it’s all been done before. Well, maybe so.
Or, maybe the big, wide world is hugely bored. All the more reason to take up character building, conduct a few deep dives into all the ways animal biology is fantastic (and fantastically weird), and push and pull each never-ending query toward its nearest (or farthest) logical (or illogical) conclusion.
➔“If you start from the wrong construction of the phenomena, then you might produce a very clever piece of philosophy, but it will be worthless because it’s not actually getting to grips with how things really are.”
(Barry C. Smith, Director, Centre for the Study of the Senses, Univ. of London, as quoted in The Irish Times)
This research article explores 15 unique methods of sensory awareness, some of their related pathologies, and other curious traits or manifestations.
Agency
Auditory Hallucinations
Chemoreceptors
Effort
Electroreception
Equilibrioception
Exoskeletons
Homeostasis
Itch
Magnetoreception
Pain
Polarized Vision
Proprioception
Spinal Reflexes
Thermoception
Some of these “senses” are largely cerebral (sense of agency), others are more instinctive (reflexive senses) or intuitive (sense of effort), while yet others are evolutionary survival mechanisms (sensing another animal’s heartbeat). Others are extraordinarily combinative (sense of balance). Many of these senses and sensory response faculties overlap (e.g., magnetoreception and polarized light).
❯❯ Agency
The sense of knowing/understanding one’s ability to act on one’s own accord. Pop psychology on mindfulness will frame this as “self-advocacy” or of “taking control of one’s life,” but such views don’t provide a fully nuanced perspective. Instead, consider how studied social psychologists may frame a sense of agency as a sense of ownership-accountability over the mind and the body, but monitored and influenced by the variables, constraints, and controversies that manifest in one’s environment, real or perceived. In this context, agency represents voluntary control over one’s thoughts and actions to reach a desired, experiential state. An important caveat, however, rests behind the descriptors “perceived” and “desired”; agency can also be dangerously misleading, as “priming thoughts” about forthcoming events often “foster [an] illusory sense of agency” over said actions or events, notes an article in Frontiers in Psychology. A sense of agency is affirmational, yes, but it can also make one delusional.
In storytelling, agency regards characters and the level of control they exert over their engagement with the narrative reality. On the micro level, agency can also refer to a character’s control, attempted control, or accountability concerning specific experiences. What environmental pressures would force a character to act in her self-interest? What dangers may be present, and how intense might they be, to force a character to work against her self-interest? Human history is rife with political machinations that have resulted in individuals who feared greater punishment for doing what was right than for their acquiescing to that which was wicked.
The differing theories of agency and cognitive causation are intensely layered. But for writers determined to validate this on the page, it may help to recall German philosopher Thomas Metzinger’s self-model theory of subjectivity. Metzinger’s theory holds that for one’s self-representation to be fully experienced, it must be transparent, and a conscious self-representation can only be fully transparent if its internal properties are accessible.
❯❯ Auditory Hallucinations
Gothic literature is bursting with auditory hallucinations, whether from the sound or voice of an “other” that has gained a sense of autonomy, from a valorized voice meant to warn against danger, from a word of the defiant who ardently resists entrapment, or from a disturbed and narcissistic, disembodied entity.
An auditory hallucination can manifest as either incoherent sounds, echoic memories of traumatic experiences, or distinct voices. In humans, such hallucinations might arise or occur in various disorders (paracusis), as a result of post-traumatic stress, or in a patient with psychosis. Auditory hallucinations occur in the general population ranging from 5% to 28%, according research appearing in the journal World Psychiatry. Altered or damaged brain connectivity (cognitive processing) is the subject of much research. But in some cases, scientists suggest the origin stems from spontaneous activation of an individual’s auditory network; that is, the spontaneous firing of sensory neurons in the absence of appropriately functioning inhibitory mechanisms (i.e., the limbic system). From the perspective of the individual, the source of the hallucination varies, as does the quality and intensity of said hallucination.
❯❯ Chemoreceptors
Sensory cells or organs that interact with chemicals in the blood; or more specifically, chemical controls for stimulating or inhibiting respiration. The amount of respiration depends on this neuronal network’s response effectiveness. Peripheral chemoreceptors detect large changes in arterial blood oxygen, notably as it relates to the respiratory rate (allowing oxygen into the blood), blood flow (sensitivity to hypoxia), and cardiac output (supplying oxygen to the body). Central chemoreceptors detect changes in arterial carbon dioxide, notably concerning brain blood flow and metabolism, lung ventilation, and pH control (for optimal protein structure and function). A simple example would be to imagine a fantasy novel in which a character or adventurer is impervious (or not) to a gaseous poison that would inhibit proper breathing.
From a more practical standpoint, abnormally enhanced peripheral chemosensory inputs result in an overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system. According to the journal Biological Research, onsetting pathologies can include “hypertension, heart failure, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (e.g., systemic inflammation, muscle dysfunction, and/or cachexia, which is when the body literally wastes away), and metabolic syndrome (e.g., sympathetic hyperactivity, impaired blood-pressure sensitivity).”
❯❯ Effort
Prior to undertaking an activity, physical or mental, most humans make an assessment of the energy required to successfully complete said effort. The “sense of effort” deemed necessary to effectively conduct a task can occur consciously or subconsciously, depending on one’s familiarity with the event at hand. Cognitive fatigue, muscular fatigue, cost-benefit analyses, and more, all affect the perception of effort.
In physical/behavioral terms, some scientists call the sense of effort a “judgment of force,” because of how an individual must accurately estimate the ratio of vigor to fatigue, assign various motor commands (intuitively or peripherally), and dynamically assess how sustained the effort must be (duration of force application). However, for individuals with disabilities, a sense of effort is tangibly skewed; practice doesn’t always make perfect; local, social, and environmental factors influence one’s quality of concentration, feelings of strain, and stimulus sensitivity (or insensitivity).
On a related note, in psychological terms, self-control is viewed as an aversive mechanism. That is to say, to consciously recognize the costs of exerting effort or to establish a credible perspective on what is or is not a rational level exertion given the scenario at hand. Too much effort? Not enough effort? The right amount of effort, but for the wrong reasons? Self-control will surely have something to say about that. Psychologists frequently debate the extent to which humans are evolutionarily hostile toward effort-contingent rewards (or, conversely, actively assign positive values to effort).
❯❯ Electroreception
At its broadest, electroreception concerns sensitivity to electrical fields. Applied narrowly, electroreception explains a predator’s capacity to locate and monitor its prey based on the electrical signals produced by said prey’s heartbeat or nerves. For a predator, this means locating one’s prey no matter where it hides, as well as at extended distances, depending on the medium through which the electrical field passes (e.g., water, air). Sensors are often delicate (e.g., beneath the skin of a shark’s head rest hundreds of highly conductive, ampullary electroreceptors). Fascinatingly, some weakly electric fish have evolved their signal frequencies away from the sensory range of their predators in an effort to increase environmental fitness. Other animals use electroreception for intraspecies communication, identifying mates, or sensing and evading unwanted visitors.
❯❯ Equilibrioception
The sense of balance. A generally unobtrusive physiological sense in humans and animals to prevent them from falling over as they move or stand. It entails a visual system, a vestibular system (spatial awareness via the inner ear apparatus), and proprioception (“kinesthesia,” the sense that lets one perceive the location, movement, and action of various parts of the body), all working together to orient the individual to the surrounding environment (and gravity) to achieve balance.
Balance is a quintessentially multi-modal sense. To summarize an array of medical literature on the matter, balance occurs when (1) sensory input (vestibular, visual, proprioceptive) is processed by (2) the cerebellum (coordination and regulation), the cerebral cortex (higher-level thinking), and the brainstem (sorting of sensory information), and is then paired with (3) motor output reflexes, motor impulses, and postural adjustments.
Cognitive or physiological damage, spatial disorientation, illness, or malfunctioning sensory inputs all affect one’s sense of balance and one’s dependence on it. As cheekily noted in an editorial published in Behavioral Sciences,“It is said that (perfect) balance is the action of not moving.”
❯❯ Exoskeletons
Not traditionally thought of as a unique sense, the exoskeleton, while protecting the body, also enhances one’s capacity to interpret the surrounding environment. Some animal exoskeletons specialize in providing certain types of sensory enhancements (e.g., stress or pressure sensitivity), some exoskeletons possess environment-particular chemical compositions (e.g., to maintain osmotic balance or inhibit infection).
For writers who are interested in this clever brand of defense and offense curiously bundled into the same package, one recommends researching the differences between exoskeletons, ossified scale exteriors, and for extra credit: whatever the hell turtles are made of (hint: a combination of bony plates, fused scapula, and fused rib bones, blended over countless years of evolution).
❯❯ Homeostasis
To wit, it’s “any process that living things use to actively maintain fairly stable conditions necessary for survival,” per Scientific American. Achieving homeostasis relies on a convergence of multiple senses.
More critically, achieving homeostasis also means maintaining stability despite an array of conflicting stressors or environmental characteristics (which themselves influence hormone secretion and sensitivity). Hunger? Thirst? Sweat? Blood pressure? In terms of what the body requires, homeostasis concerns regulatory mechanisms or processes that enable one to dynamically maintain steady-state conditions. Anticipatory feedforward mechanisms initiate advantageous and predictive responses to keep the body healthy (or, healthy enough).
Never underestimate the value of negative feedback mechanisms (i.e., change or error signaling; disturbances of the “normal range” of critical feedback), and never overlook the danger of having a time lag in repairing otherwise natural or effective systems once they’re damaged (i.e., disturbance or departure from equilibrium).
❯❯ Itch
As the journal Clinical & Experimental Allergy explains, “itch, or pruritus, can be defined as an unpleasant sensation that evokes the desire to scratch. [C]hronic itch originates from [..] [a] serious, unmet clinical need. Broadly, subtypes of chronic itch have been delineated and termed pruriceptive, neuropathic, neurogenic, and psychogenic itch.”
Pruriceptive itch follows activation of primary nerve terminals, is inflammatory in nature, and notably follows, not precedes, skin damage. A neuropathic-type itch stems from nerve injury or nerve trauma. The neurogenic type is an itch resulting from central nervous system activation without necessarily activating the sensory nerve fibers (e.g., internal injury results in external, physiological reaction). A psychogenic-type itch comes from underlying mental illness (as with delirium). So, an itch can be caused by something seemingly minor (skin irritation), injurious (nerve trauma), deceptive (overactive nerves), or systemic (internal injury or disease).
❯❯ Magnetoreception
Most commonly, navigation by way of sensitivity to magnetic field intensity. In birds, for example, the optic nerves receive and process the magnetic intensity of their environment and transmit said information to the brain. Sensitivity to magnetic fields is frequently cited when discussing what the greater animal kingdom has but humanity does not (at least, at scale). Salmon, hatchling turtles, honeybees, whales, and bats are all said to use magnetoreception, for navigation or migration, to some extent.
Magnetic fields, unlike other sensory stimuli, pass completely unimpeded through biological tissue. By extension, magnetic-field sensitivity is more ambiguous and under-researched than other senses, as the process of transducing the magnetic stimulus into a cellular response lacks specificity. Three hypotheses dominate: (1) mechanically sensitive magnetoreceptors; (2) light-sensitive, chemical-based mechanisms; (3) an anatomical structure that would enable electromagnetic induction. These concepts are not mutually exclusive, according to research published in PLOS Biology, “animals may have evolved multiple mechanisms to detect different components of the (magnetic) field.” Wild.
❯❯ Pain
Neural feedback permitting the central nervous system to detect (or avoid) potentially damaging stimuli, either passively or actively. This is nociception. A StatPearls article on PubMed notes: “Inactive nociceptors provide less-than-conscious nudges that strongly encourage the avoidance of potentially injurious and hazardous exposures.” Now, if you want to get technical, then general pain and nociception are notidentical;nociceptive pain is more acutely defined according to the locus of sensory activation (e.g., skin, tendons, joints, bones, muscles, internal organs). But to keep the conversation accessible, only a few additional notes remain.
Consider, for example, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, a rare nervous system disorder that begets a lack of sensitivity to noxious stimuli (resulting in recurring infections, cuts, bruises, and unintentional self-harm). Following such a diagnosis, “pain-sensing nerves in these patients are not properly connected in parts of brain that receive the pain messages,” per the Iranian Journal of Pediatrics. With no cure for this hereditary disease, treatment regimens aim to control body temperature and prevent self-injury.
Consider also, allodynia, a different type of pain. In short, allodynia is chronic pain brought on by extreme sensitivity to touch. Actions or behaviors that are not typically considered painful can be excruciating. Pain and pain sensitivity are essential to survival, but what if one’s body is unable to differentiate variations in pressure or temperature? The result is debilitating. In a medical environment, reducing such pain is extraordinarily complex (e.g., nerve-block injections, surgery, opioids, lots of therapy).
❯❯ Polarized Vision
Interestingly, animals with polarized vision can control the amount of light entering their eyes (or, attenuate the orientation at which light waves oscillate). Many animal species have developed superior navigational skills by basing their efforts on the sun’s various positions. In other words, navigating the sky using time-dependent light patterns. Some animals use polarized vision (or polarized-light sensitivity) for “contrast enhancement, camouflage breaking, object recognition, and signal detection and discrimination,” according to a research article published in Integrative and Comparative Biology.
When perceiving scattered or refracted light, environmental factors, atmospheric factors, perturbations in the medium (e.g., waves in water), medium quality, and pollution all affect an already highly sensitive manner of pattern discernment.
Human-world applications abound, from fancy sunglasses that enable one to increase visual clarity in high-glare environments to increasing the precision of advanced military technology. In one fantastic example, engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied the mantis shrimp in extraordinary detail and developed a camera (i.e., a one-inch cube) that mimics the shrimp’s use of polarized light as well as the shrimp’s capacity to manipulate its detection of light intensity. According to Scientific American, the camera’s dynamic emulation of these natural abilities could help cars detect hazards in ambiguous conditions, enable military drones to identify camouflaged or shadowed targets, and help surgeons perform more accurately. It’s difficult to state how powerful this new technology is: The engineers’ cube camera’s light-detection ability was 10,000-times higher than today’s commercial cameras (and yes, the tech is already available for cheap, mass production…).
❯❯ Proprioception
The sense that allows an individual to perceive or otherwise intuit the location, movement, and action of various parts of the body (i.e., a limb-position sense). Proprioception is also defined as the unconscious awareness of joint position, for how one absently-mindedly deliberates, identifies, and predicts willed movement. That is to say, knowing what one’s body is doing, in the moment (not reactive or reflexive), without really thinking about it. This is all about movement detection and movement-detection thresholds.
Likening proprioception to kinesthesia, either broadly or narrowly, is common, but may not be entirely appropriate when one considers how dependent (and specific) proprioception is regarding sensory nerve endings and their correlation to the particular location, position, and orientation of specific joints, muscles, and limbs (e.g., athletic trainers often focus on soft tissues, such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments). Some researchers have gone so far as to detail the number and type of skin receptors pertinent to signaling limb position. To simplify, proprioception is imperative for precise and fluid movements.
Impairment doesn’t simply mean reduced movement-sense and spatial-bodily awareness (kinesthesia), damaged receptors mean the body’s physical pathway to communicate with the brain is broken or askew. For example, imprecise sensory interpretation as a result of muscle vibration (e.g., antagonistic conditioning, muscle fatigue) may encourage receptors to inform the brain of the illusion of limb movement or of limb displacement.
❯❯ Spinal Reflexes
Also not considered among the traditional senses, reflexes are important and effective components of sensory stimulus-reaction complexes. Reflexes are involuntary or unintentional (uncontrolled). Each type of reflex response is initiated by sensory stimuli relayed from any of the other major senses. Most importantly, the stimulus itself excites specialized sensory receptors that respond unambiguously to a certain type, quality, or intensity of stimulation.
Interestingly,reflexive actions receive their signals from the spinal cord. This makes them considerably faster than one’s normal reactions because they bypass the traditional neural pathway (the brain). Not to say the brain is uninvolved. The brain continuously builds, adapts, and influences spinal circuitry, in both short- and long-term development, and many spinal reflexes operate simultaneously as a result. An overview of the main types of spinal reflexes will include: stretch reflex (muscle contraction), crossed-extensor reflex (opposite limb compensating for loss of support), withdrawal reflex (nociceptive reflex, protecting the body from pain), and autogenic inhibition reflex (negative feedback mechanism to control muscle tension).
“The spinal cord is the simplest and most technically accessible part of the mammalian [central nervous system]. Thus, spinal cord reflexes, the brain’s influence over them, and the spinal cord plasticity this influence produces provide the basis of a powerful experimental protocol for studying the mechanisms and substrates of learning.” (Encyclopedia of Neuroscience)
❯❯ Thermoception
The brain’s recognition and the body’s ability to register changes in temperature. Or, put more simply, sensitivity to heat flux and temperature intensity. Animals possess a diversity of temperature sensitivity mechanisms. All thermosensors have activation thresholds and are moderated by various inflammatory mediators (e.g., some proteins are intrinsically heat-sensitive, others are cold-sensitive).
What does this mean? It means thermoception is fundamental to animal survival, as temperature homeostasis is essential to comfort and reproduction. It also means the human body cannot actually determine the absolute temperature of its environment; it must instead regulate its own temperature relative to that of its immediate surroundings.
Mutated or damaged proteins (as with inflamed or damaged tissue), associated with temperature detection, can result in heat hyperalgesia (pathological sensitivity to heat), in which one’s heat-activation thresholds are so markedly low that otherwise pleasant and warm temperatures can be very painful.
The Fuller Brooch, from 9th century England. The brooch is the earliest known personification of the 5 senses. Sight, which was thought to be the most important of the senses, is in the center, surrounded by the other 4. Each sense can be identified by their actions. Taste has his hand in his mouth, Hearing´s hand is by his ear, Touch is rubbing his hands together, and Smell has his hands behind his back and is standing between two plants. The brooch is in such good condition that it was once though to be a fake.
