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We’ve all heard that humans have an inferior sense of smell relative to dogs, mice, and anything furry with a nose. But that’s nothing more than a 19th-century myth, according to a literature review published in Science. The review explores the religious politics, philosophical speculation, and straight-up bad science that stoked the belief that the human sense of smell was inferior to that of other animals, concluding that human olfaction is nothing to sniff at.
John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University and coauthor on the study, told Fatherly that the notion that humans have a puny olfactory organ and diminished ability to smell is nothing but a “myth”. Rather, McGann claims that the sorry reputation of our olfaction began 150 years ago, with an attempt to separate humans from sex-crazed beasts. “There was this idea in the 19th Century that becoming part of a civilized, rational creature with free will required you to lose your ability to be compelled into dirty sexual behavior by smell,” he says.
The story of our slandered sniffers begins with Paul Broca, the celebrated 19th Century neuroscientist who discovered the brain’s speech center in the eponymous “Broca’s area”. Broca divided mammals into two broad categories—those driven by smell and those superior breeds immune to olfactory temptation (primates, humans). This dichotomy set the stage for future scientists to spurn the human olfactory system. Even Freud got in on the action, declaring that all men who take pleasure in fine scents were, you guessed it, sexual deviants.
“It goes back to the Enlightenment,” Ann-Sophie Barwich, a self-proclaimed “smellosopher”who studies olfaction along with the history and philosophy of science at Columbia University and was not involved in the study, told Fatherly. “Cognition was attributed to vision. It was all light and reason. Smell was for the perverts, lunatics, idiots, and women. It’s complete bullshit.”
Read more here. (Fatherly)
John McGann, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University and coauthor on the study, told Fatherly that the notion that humans have a puny olfactory organ and diminished ability to smell is nothing but a “myth”. Rather, McGann claims that the sorry reputation of our olfaction began 150 years ago, with an attempt to separate humans from sex-crazed beasts. “There was this idea in the 19th Century that becoming part of a civilized, rational creature with free will required you to lose your ability to be compelled into dirty sexual behavior by smell,” he says.
The story of our slandered sniffers begins with Paul Broca, the celebrated 19th Century neuroscientist who discovered the brain’s speech center in the eponymous “Broca’s area”. Broca divided mammals into two broad categories—those driven by smell and those superior breeds immune to olfactory temptation (primates, humans). This dichotomy set the stage for future scientists to spurn the human olfactory system. Even Freud got in on the action, declaring that all men who take pleasure in fine scents were, you guessed it, sexual deviants.
“It goes back to the Enlightenment,” Ann-Sophie Barwich, a self-proclaimed “smellosopher”who studies olfaction along with the history and philosophy of science at Columbia University and was not involved in the study, told Fatherly. “Cognition was attributed to vision. It was all light and reason. Smell was for the perverts, lunatics, idiots, and women. It’s complete bullshit.”
Read more here. (Fatherly)
