The Five Senses Myth
Touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. These words are very well known among any person with an education past kindergarten. Anyone who is asked what these are called would reply with “the five senses”. This is because schools teach the idea that humans have five senses and only five senses. A New York Times article describes the five senses as, “A sense may be defined as a mechanism in the body which allows a human or an animal to receive special information about the world and transmit it along nerve pathways to the brain” (We Have More Than Five Senses…,1964). However, it has been researched by many different sources that prove the five senses are a myth. Many have argued that humans have much more than five senses. Some say that humans have up to twenty-one different senses. This is a fascinating piece of information because the five senses are something that is ingrained in everyone as a child. This is due to the teachability of explaining five senses to kids rather than teaching all the little things and nuances of how the human body and mind work. The spreading of the five senses myth is largely in part to everyone accepting it as fact and not even bothering to look into the validity of it. Also, human nature is drawn to patterns and repetition. So, if this is how it’s always been, then why change it?
The concept of five senses dates way back in time to Aristotle, a well-known philosopher from Ancient Greece. In Aristotle’s book De Anima, he writes about the connection between human senses and sense organs. Aristotle claims that there is no sixth sense because there are only five sense organs. “There is no sixth sense in addition to the five enumerated — sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. (Aristotle, in Ross, 1931, p.424b)” (Wade, 2010). Aristotle was considered a very intellectual person and is still considered to be today. He is famously known to be one of the greatest thinkers in politics, ethics, and psychology. Because of Aristotle’s accomplishments and background, people believe what he says to always be true. Someone of this intelligence would surely be correct in whatever he was talking about, right? However, many intellectuals today disagree when it comes to Aristotle’s findings of the human body and the five senses. If we want to understand Aristotle’s reasoning, we have to have a background on how he came to his conclusion.
Aristotle ultimately came to the conclusion of five sense organs equalling five senses because of his theory on how humans interacted with the world. For instance, believing that your eye is the sense organ for sight, and your ears are the sense organ for hearing appears to be logical because we use our eyes to see and our ears to hear. Unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily cover every sense we use in our day to day lives. For example, what sense organ would represent a sense of balance? Or what sense organ in our bodies tells us if we are hungry or not? Even though Aristotle was a very famous intellectual, there were still holes like these in his theory that could be disproven years later by other educated individuals. Dr. Henshaw from the University of Tulsa writes, “In De Anima (Of the Soul) Aristotle argues that, for every sense, there is a sense organ. So far, he’s on reasonably solid ground. It’s when he goes on to say that there can be no sixth sense because there are only five sense organs, that he gets himself into trouble” (Henshaw, 2012).
Even though Aristotle’s theory of sense can be disproven by many educated individuals, it is still used and taught today in schools around the country. This spread of misinformation causes individuals to believe a theory that is not necessarily true for the sake of simplification. Even older individuals who have gone through many years of education still believe it to this day. Christian Jarrett writes, “One of these is the idea that the human brain is served by five senses. This belief is so ingrained that even the scientifically literate will treat it as taken-for-granted common knowledge”(Jarrett,2014). Jarret then goes on to give an example about how in New Scientist magazine, a scientist’s answer to a question asked was, “A straightforward answer is that it means everything that appears to our five senses”(Jarrett,2014). It is clear to see that this particular scientist is taking the five senses myth as fact instead of a broad generalization of the human senses. This may seem shocking but makes sense because of how logical the myth appears to be. For instance, there are some senses that we would never think to include when we talk about human senses. One example given by Dr. Henshaw is, “When you start counting sense organs, you get to six right away: the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and the vestibular system” (Henshaw, 2012). The vestibular system is a sensory system that provides the brain with information about motion, head position, and spatial awareness. This is a lesser-known part of the human body and it makes sense why most people would not include this piece of information when talking about the five senses. For example, teaching a pre-schooler that our five senses are hearing, touch, sight, smell, and taste is much easier than explaining all the little, but important details that help our bodies to interact with the world. This is the case when it comes to most of the other senses that are not included in the main five. They are complicated and not easy to explain in one word. Therefore, they aren’t included at all.
Even though there is simplicity in narrowing down the human senses to five, there are other problems with the myth other than what Dr. Henshaw mentioned. One problem with the five senses myth is that it is not necessarily cut and dry on what defines a human sense. For example, if we were to include a human sense for every sensory receptor we have in our body, there could be way more than five senses. Dr. Henshaw explains, “Instead of a sense organ, each separate sense only requires a different kind of sensory receptor. In the skin alone, there are at least four different kinds of sensory receptors” (Henshaw, 2012). This shows how fuzzy the line is on what we can consider a sense or not. We would consider “touch” as one sense, however, it can be broken down into four different senses for skin alone. This gives some leeway and some interpretation of how one would define a human sense. Would you take into account every sensory receptor that is present in our skin, or only consider that to be touch? Many people’s unique perception of the human senses is why there are so many different numbers and estimates for how many humans really have. This kind of example is true for almost every basic sense. Another example is the eyes. “Human eyes contain four different kinds of sensory receptors: three types of cones (optimized for long, medium, and short-wavelength light) and rods (optimized for low light conditions)”. So, do we count sight as one sense? Or include all the different parts of the eyes that help our vision in various ways. The author of the book “Great Myths of the Brain”, Christian Jarrett writes, “If it only were that simple. Simply defining what we mean by a “sense” leads you down a slippery slope into philosophy. One, somewhat vague definition might argue that a human sense is simply a unique way for the brain to receive information about the world and the body. If that is the case, then we can claim with confidence that there are certainly more than five human senses” (Jarrett, 2014). This further proves that coming to the conclusion of humans only having five senses is very broad and misses out completely on some of the most crucial aspects of how humans survive and interact with the world around them. Jarrett then goes on to explain the less known senses such as proprioception which is awareness of the body and the vestibular system in the inner ear which helps humans to keep balance.
Almost everybody can identify taste, or smell as a sense. This is because these are the most obvious examples of how humans interact with the world around them. However, what about the senses that we don’t recognize consciously, but use constantly in our everyday lives. One example of this would be proprioception. Phillip Perry from “Big Think” describes proprioception as “the ability to innately tell where out appendages, muscles, and other body parts are in space. You’re able to place that finger on the tip of your nose in total darkness, thanks to this sense” (Perry, 2018). This is an ability that we use all the time, even just for determining what type of ground we are standing on without looking. However, it is not included in the basic five senses. Equilibrioception is another frequently used sense, but it is hardly ever talked about. Equilibrioception is our sense of balance. Balance is a crucial part of our everyday lives and without it, we would not be able to walk. Even though equilibrioception is a very important sense, it again is not included in the main five senses.
Another lesser-known sense is thermoception. This is the ability to determine temperature, which is another sense that is immensely important to humans. Thermoception allows us to react to prevent frost burn when it’s too cold outside, or sunburn when it’s too hot outside. Even though this sense is not included in the normal five, it is important for humans to function and survive. There are also senses that help to relay the body's needs to the brain. For example, Amber Jorgenson writes, “Perhaps most immediately obvious is our sense of hunger. When we’re low on food, our stomach begins producing a hormone called ghrelin. This hormone travels to a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, where it activates neurons that stimulate hunger.” (Jorgenson, 2019). These senses are not necessarily talked about when we talk about human senses, but humans would certainly die if these signals were not relayed to our brain.
Now, the question is whether you include all of these into one sense or each as a separate sense. This is another example of where the line is not very clear on what is a sense and what is not. Some of it is left to personal opinion and how one would define a human sense. While there are many more examples of “subtle senses that most people never really perceive”(Bradford,2017), such as “Kinaesthesia, Nociception, Chronoception, Electroception, and Magnetoreception”(Gray, 2017), they all show how the “Five Senses” myth can be very misleading and dumbs down the process of how our bodies react to the world around us.
The “Five Senses” myth is a myth that has been and will continue to be taught and ingrained in people’s brains as fact. This is one of many examples where humans choose to believe what they have been taught, instead of questioning a theory or doing research. However, it is a very common mistake believing the “Five Senses” myth because even Aristotle, a great intellectual thinker, made the same mistake that we do to this day.
References:
Bradford, A. (2017, October 24). The Five (and More) Senses. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.livescience.com/60752-human-senses.html
Gray, A. (2017, January 9). Humans have more than 5 senses. Retrieved April 13, 2020, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/humans-have-more-than-5-senses/
Henshaw, J. H. (n.d.). How many senses do we have? Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://www.press.jhu.edu/news/blog/how-many-senses-do-we-have
Jarrett, C. (2014, November 19). Psychology: How many senses do we have? Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20141118-how-many-senses-do-you-have
Jorgenson, A. (2019, December 17). You Know the Five Human Senses — Here Are Four You Don’t. Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/you-know-the-five-human-senses-heres-four-you-dont
Perry, P. (2019, February 25). Think you have only 5 senses? You’ve actually got about 14 to 20. Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/think-you-have-only-5-senses-its-actually-a-lot-more-than-that
Wade, N. J. (2003, June). The search for a sixth sense: the cases for vestibular, muscle, and temperature senses. Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12953620
We Have More Than Five Senses; Most people take the faculties of sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing for granted-but not the scientist. Recent findings suggest we may have abilities we never suspected. (1964, March 15). Retrieved April 8, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/15/archives/we-have-more-than-five-senses-most-people-take-the-faculties-of.html
