Review of WHERE WE MEET THE WORLD
A science journey through the human senses
Have you ever really focused on your senses? How much stimuli you’re experiencing at any given moment? When you stop and think about it, it’s extraordinary how much work not only our sensory systems are putting in every second of our existence, but also the work of our brain to synthesize the vast array of information constantly streaming in to provide us with our cohesive conscious sensation of being alive.
Although I’ve known quite a bit about human sense from teaching introductory psychology for many years, I learned so much more from Ashley Ward’s Where We Meet the Word: The Story of the Senses. He brings you on a wonderful scientific journey of our senses to completely overhaul your sensory knowledge.
Ward focuses each chapter on a single sense – the major five senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch – with an additional chapter each on how senses interact with each other, and the powerful role the brain plays in weaving all of this sensory information together into a perceptual experience. Although the book is centered on humans, he brings in interesting research on other animals as well.
I learned a lot in from this book. Most interestingly I learned why I can read with non-narrative noise in the background (I read a lot with sports on in the background and music). It turns our that the way our brain reads words, like the ones you are reading now on this page, are processed in the same way as speech is in the brain, which is utterly remarkable. And because we have a specialized speech processing area in our brain, the background noise isn’t ‘competing’ with my reading. Now, I absolutely cannot read if a sitcom or other conversational show is on – my brain can’t read and listen at the same time in that scenario!
What I found quite lovely about this book is how Ward opened my mind to the centrality of senses other than vision in our everyday experience. We typically think of ourselves as a vision dominant species. We have great color vision and acuity. But we underestimate the role of our hearing and smell. Remember: we’re mammals after all, and we have a long evolutionary history of being small, burrowing animals who relied little on vision and heavily on smell and hearing. Those ancient skills are still with us today, we just don’t notice with our eyes open.
Where We Meet the World is an excellent read. Truly engaging and brimming with interesting facts that shed light on our everyday experience. It’s a great complement to Ed Yong’s sense-focused book that came out last year (see recommendations below) that more widely covers senses across the animal kingdom. Ward’s book is also going to be added to any future update I do on my ‘intro to psychology book guide’ as this is the kind of book I’ve been waiting for on sensation.
Published: March 2023
Publisher: Basic Books
Format: Advanced Hardcover courtesy of Basic Books
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (2022) | Read my review
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin (2008)
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Great review, does the author talk about adaptation of the brain for disabled people, particularly those who have sensory impairment or physical impairment
We know for example that the visual cortex expand its territory for blind people to include hearing and touch sensory