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A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES |
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The initial mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveller reach his starting point in the first place? How did I reach the window, the walls, the fireplace, the room itself; how do I happen to be beneath this ceiling and above this floor? Oh, that is a matter for conjecture, for argument pro and con, for research, supposition, dialectic! I can hardly remember how. Unlike Livingstone, on the verge of darkest Africa, I have no maps to hand, no globe of the terrestrial or the celestial spheres, no chart of mountains, lakes, no sextant, no artificial horizon. If ever I possessed a compass, it has long since disappeared. There must be, however, some reasonable explanation for my presence here. Some step started me toward this point, as opposed to all other points on the habitable globe. I must consider; I must discover it. -- Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many friends and acquaintances have sent me useful books and articles, or shared reminiscences with me about the senses. I'm indebted especially to Walter Anderson, Ronald Buckalew, Whitney Chadwick, Ann Druyan, Tiffany Field, Marcia Fink, Geoff Haines-Stiles, Jeanne Mackin, Charles Mann, Peter Meese, the Monell Chemical Institute, Joseph Schall, Saul Schanberg, Dava Sobel, Sandy Steltz, and Merlin Tuttle. My special thanks to Dr. David CampbeIl and Dr. Roger Payne, who were generous enough to cast an eye over the manuscript, looking for infelicities. Almost every week, a familiar buff-colored envelope would arrive from my editor, Sam Vaughan, whose leads, suggestions, and questions I grew to rely on, and whose friendship I've come to cherish. Parade magazine first published four excerpts from "Touch," "Vision,'" and "Smell." "Courting the Muse" appeared in The New York Times Book Review. Part of "Why Leaves Turn Color in the Fall" appeared in a different form in Conde Nast Traveler. "How to Watch the Sky" was initially prepared for the National Geographic Society's book The Curious Naturalist and is reproduced here with my gratitude for their understanding.
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