Comments on: Trusting the senses

By: Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:49:49 +0000

Heather, I’m with you on being a sensory person. When I was a small child I’m sure my mother lived in fear of taking me into a store because I had to touch everything. I still do. As you say, exploring the world right in front of us can go a long way toward overcoming our “alarming” disconnection from the rest of nature.

By: Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:44:43 +0000

Anne, thanks for visiting. You’re all about helping people see the world, aren’t you?

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:40:21 +0000

This is a very interesting post. Personally I am a very sensory-oriented person, and my enjoyment of this natural world would be greatly diminished if I lost even one of my senses. It is through my senses that I feel a deep connection to nature, and it is because of those sensory perceptions that I can sometimes, if I’m lucky, transcend the sensory feedback to feel something… “more” (bordering on spiritual, mystical, whatever you want to call it). I’m sure scientists have learned how much more there is to this universe than what we can overtly observe with our most basic senses (that which lies at the surface), but most of us are not scientists, and are thus perfectly content to observe what lies at the surface. Furthermore, after realizing that there is an alarming lack of connection between most people and the earth that they inhabit, I think that the simple observation of the objects in nature found in one’s own backyard or park – whether it be a flower, a mushroom, a bird, or noticing how the wind tosses the leaves in the trees – would go a long way toward bettering our lives. To discount the role of our senses, to presume that sensory observations are somehow inferior to those made by hard science, would be a step backward for the non-scientists (i.e. the general public), I think… a dumbing down that they do not need.

By: Anne Doyle

Anne Doyle — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:00:03 +0000

Taking the time to attend in this culture can be a challenge, but it makes all the difference.

All good wishes!!

By: Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:17:15 +0000

Rosemary, while I’m speaking here of senses rather than emotions, I agree with you completely that we need both reason and emotion. What’s more, I think we’ve created a dilemma for ourselves by defining knowledge as what we can know separate from feelings. While the knowledge that we gain from data that is separated from feelings (fact separated from value) has certainly allowed us to accomplish things in the world, by valuing this kind of knowing over knowing that includes feelings, we’ve made it harder for ourselves to turn back from the brink of ecological disaster. We have less access to the resources and attitudes that might have prevented us from creating this disaster in the first place.

By: Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:07:41 +0000

Annette, me neither! I will have to read that book. Thanks for mentioning.

By: Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Priscilla Stuckey, PhD — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:07:10 +0000

Hystery, you tap into my feminist background with these comments. I first learned the critique of the body-mind split from feminist philosophers of science, and a feminist analysis remains the bedrock of my thinking. As you point out, the female body in Western history is always an aberration from the (male) norm, with women’s bodies seen as closer to earth, to “nature,” carrying the marks of sex and gender–as if men too did not arise from and return to earth. It required an enormous mind-trick to project all that onto women, and it has required an equally enormous alienation of men from their own senses and feelings.

By: Hystery

Hystery — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:30:50 +0000

I am grateful for this reading. It would not have been my first reaction to the cautions I also frequently read by scientists and other intellectuals regarding the limited trust we should place in our own embodied perspective. I have often focused on how very good such distrust of that which seems obvious through our senses has been for feminist theory and other marginalized socio/historical perspectives. For too long, the male body has been the measure of reality. From how we build houses to how we determine the mathematical rules of artistic beauty to where we hang the “master”pieces on the wall, it has been the male body’s senses that describe reality. I am happy when we are told that our senses (their senses) cannot be the final standard. When we learn that our own perspective is merely that- perspective and not reality, we are less inclined to allow our viewpoint to operate as a universal rule. But then, even as I write this I recognize that I automatically write as though I speak as a privileged knower- I have fallen back on the masculine alter-ego I developed as a young woman forgetting that while I may be quite happy to hear science say the body cannot know truth, I would like first to let my female body have a shot at it.

By: Annette

Annette — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:43:53 +0000

Just reading “Reconnecting with Nature” by Michael Cohen and he lists our 53 senses! Didn’t know I had so many!

By: Rosemary Carstens

Rosemary Carstens — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:38:41 +0000

Science is fine, but it’s not cast in stone any more than what our senses tell us is. Daily “old” science is disproven and new, wondrous discoveries are made. That they are wondrous, amazing, fascinating prove my point–these are EMOTIONS, senses if you will, that allow us to appreciate what science has revealed. I think we need BOTH–we need to questions BOTH and we need to allow ourselves the beauty in both knowledge and emotion.