senses – Harmonia Philosophica

Smell… Understand… Know…

A pair of researchers has used machine learning to understand what a chemical smells like – a research breakthrough with potential applications in the food flavor and fragrance industries. (1)

But how can you understand smell without smelling something?

How can you understand anything without knowing it first?

Why would you seek knowledge about something you understand?

Look at that dog.

Can he understand you?

Watch that bird.

Can ignorance ever change its name to knowledge?

Smell that flower.

Can you understand it?

Petty humans.

Can’t you see?

You can understand everything…

Only because you know nothing!

(Don’t be afraid…)

One drone, four microphones and a loudspeaker: nothing more is needed to determine the position of walls and other flat surfaces within a room. This has been mathematically proved by Prof. Gregor Kemper of the Technical University of Munich and Prof. Mireille Boutin of Purdue University in Indiana, USA. (1)

The only way to see is to speak.

The only way to hear is to see.

The only way to taste is to cook.

Don’t you see?

There is nothing to see…

There is everything to create.

Your senses do not connect you with the cosmos.

They connect the cosmos with you!

Awareness.

A research indicates that trees might be ‘aware’ of their size: Scientists found out that birch trees adjust their stem thickness to support their weight. (1)

We hold our consciousness so high.

Never have we thought to look down to the dirt.

Never have we thought that this might be the lowest of the possible forms of Being.

And that we need to get low in order to rise…

Look around.

So many things to see.

Do you see anything?

Knowing thy self…

Interoception is the awareness of our physiological states; it’s how animals and humans know they’re hungry or thirsty, and how they know when they’ve had enough to eat or drink. But precisely how the brain estimates the state of the body and reacts to it remains unclear. In a paper published in the journal Neuron, neuroscientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shed new light on the process, demonstrating that a region of the brain called the insular cortex orchestrates how signals from the body are interpreted and acted upon. The work represents the first steps toward understanding the neural basis of interoception, which could in turn allow researchers to address key questions in eating disorders, obesity, drug addiction, and a host of other diseases. (1)

I feel hungry.

I know I am.

My brain thinks so.

Based on input from the stomach.

I feel alive.

My brain thought of that.

Based on input from the stomach.

I feel existing.

My brain thought of that.

Based on input from the stomach.

Do you feel it?

My stomach feels weird…

I know it is just my stomach.

Based on input from… ?

Listen. Without listening…

Brain activity synchronizes with sound waves, even without audible sound, through lip-reading, according to new research published in JNeurosci.

Bourguignon et al. used magnetoencephalography to measure brain activity in healthy adults while they listened to a story or watched a silent video of a woman speaking. The participants’ auditory cortices synchronized with sound waves produced by the woman in the video, even though they could not hear it.

The synchronization resembled that in those who actually did listen to the story, indicating the brain can glean auditory information from the visual information available to them through lip-reading. (1)

Listen.

Without listening.

For what you listen to is not what you listen. But what you see.

See.

Without seeing anything.

For what you see is not what you see. But what you feel and know.

Live.

Without actually living.

For what you experience in life is not life. But the expectation of death…