Tripping With Our Multitude of Senses

Whoa, Ashley Ward! Your new book on the senses called Where We Meet the World held me mesmerized. Yes, you’re scholarly but in a page-turning way. I couldn’t help but think – as you remind us how the sight- and hearing challenged develop strength in other senses to perceive the world – of how Aldous Huxley, nearly blind since youth, found his way around his home and through life with a sense of hearing, touch and location largely dormant in the rest of us. You tour us through so many more senses than the five we usually think of. The way these and more cross over (as in synesthesia, where someone might hear music and perceive color) is, as you explain, pretty amazing! What about interoception? The sense of the body’s internal state. Wow. Surprising, too, how one culture might give prominence to a sense that another culture might regard as secondary. A full-of-surprises book.