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    This (lowercase (translateProductType product.productType)) has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
    Stenslund, Anette 2015. A Whiff of Nothing: The Atmospheric Absence of Smell. The Senses and Society, Vol. 10, Issue. 3, p. 341.
    Grimshaw, Mark and Walther-Hansen, Mads 2015. The Sound of the Smell of my Shoes. p. 1.
    Barcan, Ruth 2014. Aromatherapy and the Mixed Blessing of Feminization. The Senses and Society, Vol. 9, Issue. 1, p. 33.
    Read, Sophie 2013. Ambergris and Early Modern Languages of Scent. The Seventeenth Century, Vol. 28, Issue. 2, p. 221.
    Akpınar, Burhan Özdaş, Faysal Yıldırım, Bilal and Batdı, Veli 2013. The Analysis of the Effects of Olfactive Stimulus in Learning in Context of Educational Technology. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 103, Issue. , p. 954.
    Novellino, Dario 2009. From ‘impregnation’ to ‘attunement’: a sensory view of how magic works. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 15, Issue. 4, p. 755.
    Ferdenzi, Camille Coureaud, Gérard Camos, Valérie and Schaal, Benoist 2008. Human awareness and uses of odor cues in everyday life: Results from a questionnaire study in children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, Vol. 32, Issue. 5, p. 422.
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  • Print publication year: 2002
  • Online publication date: September 2009

5 - Nose-wise: Olfactory Metaphors in Mind

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Summary

In Visual Thinking, the psychologist Rudolf Arnheim argued that there is no division between seeing and thinking: “Visual perception is visual thinking” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 14). As for smell and taste, “one can indulge in smells and tastes, but one can hardly think in them” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 18). That dismissive judgment as regards the cognitive potential of olfaction by such a prominent psychologist does not bode well for a book that is dedicated to the theme of olfaction and cognition.

Denigration of olfaction is a common theme among Western thinkers (cf. Le Guérer, Chapter 1, this volume). The eighteenth-century philosopher Condillac, for example, remarked that “of all the senses smell is the one that seems to contribute the least to the operations of the human mind” (Condillac, 1930, p. xxxi). His contemporary, Immanuel Kant, similarly wrote: “To which organic sense do we owe the least and which seems to be the most dispensible? The sense of smell. It does not pay us to cultivate it or to refine it in order to gain enjoyment; this sense can pick up more objects of aversion than of pleasure (especially in crowded places) and, besides, the pleasure coming from the sense of smell cannot be other than fleeting and transitory” (Kant, 1978, p. 46).

The Kantian line of thought continues to inform the way in which aesthetic experience is conceptualized in the West. Aesthetic experience is defined as the disinterested contemplation of some object in which beauty inheres.

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Olfaction, Taste, and Cognition
  • Online ISBN: 9780511546389
  • Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511546389
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