The Natural History of the Senses

Ackerman, Diane. The Natural History of the Senses. New York: Random House, 1990. 331 pages, introduction, post script, index.

Diane Ackerman, author of The Natural History of the Senses, seems to posses the ideal qualifications to author such a titillating and all-encompassing work. According to the author's own website, Ackerman is a noted author of poetry, memoir, and nonfiction. Her education is grounded in both creative and academic training. She received a Master of Arts (degree), Master of Fine Arts (degree), and a doctorate from Cornell University. Previous to writing A Natural History of the Senses in 1990, Ackerman authored several volumes of poetry, and has written a kind of sequel after The Natural History of the Sense's success, called The Natural History of Love. She has authored a book for children on animal's senses, and even has a molecule named after her, called "dianeackerone."

Ackerman's book touches and experiments on the history of all five senses: smell, touch, taste, hearing, and finally vision. Ackerman probably chooses that order because she wishes to move from the most sensual, intuitive, and indescribable of the senses to the most tangible. Ackerman discusses with the audience, that it is essential to use a multifaceted approach to understanding human sensory experience. In short, to merely examine the literary or scientific aspects of human life is not enough; therefore Ackerman embraces all scientific and artistic exercises in her natural history.

For example, Ackerman's discussion of smell begins with a quotation from perhaps the greatest poet of smell, Helen Keller, and follows with a discussion of how the Silk Road to the Orient began as a quest for perfumes, and quotes the fictional Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles about the usefulness of smell in finding criminal evidence. She records personal experiences as different as going to an aromatherapist in Yorkshire, England to a discussion of Cleopatra's perfumes. Ackerman makes rather sweeping statements, such as calling smell the mute sense, the sense that people find most difficult to describe.

Touching is the one sense that has no specific organ associated with it, unless one counts the skin. Besides discussing its sensual potential (it is the sense most intimately shared between two people, while smell and taste are rather isolated and personal sensory experiences) Ackerman also examines its scientific role in socializing children. Even in puppies, the animal's growth hormones will decrease, if they are taken away from their mothers too soon. In fetuses, touch is the first sense to develop.

Taste takes the book on a culinary tour through the ages, examining the historical practice of torturing animals to make their flesh more flavorful in 18th century England as well as what is considered tasty in our own culture. What is thought to taste good varies considerably from culture to culture, region to region. In the Amazon, piranha and turtle soup is a delicacy; a German prefers strudel, and an American faints at the sight of all of these foods.

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