Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures

TLDR

Worlds of Sense examines how cultures organize perception, contrasting Western visual models with non‑visual frameworks such as smell or temperature, and questions whether sensory hierarchies reflect natural or socially constructed orders. The study seeks to demonstrate that sensory perception varies dramatically across cultures by posing comparative questions about sensory hierarchies. It concludes that perception is not purely physical, and that the ordering of senses is intimately linked to cultural and temporal contexts.

Abstract

Worlds of Sense is an historical and cross-cultural study of the senses and the ways in which different cultures make sense of the world. In the West we think in terms of visual models such as view. The Ongee of the Andaman Islands live in a world ordered by smell and the Tzotzil of Mexico hold that temperature is the basic force of the cosmos. What different modes of consciousness are created by treating smell or touch as a fundamental way of knowing? How does the sensory order of a culture relate to its social order? Is there a natural order of the senses? By asking such searching questions of different cultures, Constance Classen aims to illustrate that the differences in sensory perception can be striking. Worlds of Sense argues that perception cannot be treated as a purely physical act but that the list, hierarchy and ordering of the senses are deeply related to time and culture.