After reading Aaron
Copland’s essay “How We Listen”, and listening to the “Colors” podcast, it
seems that most of our senses are untrustworthy on their own. The most
untrustworthy sense to me is sight. The podcast went into detail on how
different animals see things with different color spectrums making it the most
perception based sense. So therefore different species can see the same thing
as different shades of a color or a different color altogether. It was extremely
interesting when they used the choir to sort of represent the spectrum of
colors that animals see. Adding lower and higher notes or more middles to show
a wider range of color. Incorporating another untrustworthy sense, sound. The
images we get from the words about colors plus the added stimulant of sounds
and them becoming richer as more color is talked about really help the
understanding of the concept. Sound is untrustworthy because, as Copland states
in “How We Listen”, we hear or listen on three different plans, and everyone
hears differently. The same can go for smell and taste as well. All four of
these sense are all just too subjective to each individual to be considered
trustworthy enough to convey the point or definition of something. That leaves
us with touch. Touch would have to be the most trustworthy of the five senses
because it is the hardest to be manipulated. If something is cold, then it will
be could to anyone who touches it. The same goes for if something is hot. It
relies more on the outside stimulant than the other sense and therefor is more
universally similar between individuals. Sight relies on the eyes and their
capabilities, smell can be easily manipulated by past memories, taste relies on
the taste buds, and, as Copeland said, hearing depends on how the individual is
choosing to listen. All more inward dependency but touch depends much more on
what is being touched and not who is touching it.
I agree with your opinion over touch being the strongest sense but I disagree with your weakest After reading the essay "How we listen" and listening to the podcast "colors". Our most trustworthy sense would be touch because it is the only sense that that we don’t perceive differently, unlike smell, taste and hearing which we tend to have a perception of our own, therefor they are easily manipulated. Touch is the most dependable. Blind and deaf humans rely on the sense of touch because, of its dependence of stimulation from the outside. The most common example can be when a child touches the stove when it is hot learns to not do it again, therefor it’s a trait we are born with but then develops itself from past experiences and learning from circumstances. The weakest sense in my opinion would be listening because as mentioned by Aaron Copland in his essay “How we listen” our perception changes because of our emotions and different experiences causing a misinterpretation in music. He shares the 3 planes of our auditory sense and he states that we listen depending on our capacities, meaning hearing is different for everyone, although our ears are structured the same the sounds we listen to can be perceived differently and same would go for our sight , proving the unreliability of these senses.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. I learned a lot about the 5 senses from both the podcast “color” and Aaron Copland’s “How We Listen.” From all the info I learned about the 5 senses, I would have to say that the most untrustworthy sense is in fact, sight. The podcast spoke mainly about the sense of sight. It went into detail about the different ways we as humans see sight, and different species around us see completely different colors. For example, dog’s see primarily only greens and blues, while people have a red “cone” in our eyes enabling us to see not only red shades, but about 98 different shades than what dogs can see; because the red cone then allows us to blend colors together creating these 98 or so new colors. Sight is untrustworthy because it varies so much even from one person to the next. Of the last 4 senses I would also agree that touch is the most trustworthy. What you say about things still being either hot or cold is very logical because in fact, the objects we encounter are indeed either hot or cold, and we will recognize this right off the bat. No matter who or what animal touched something, if the temperature is hot, the brain will register it as hot when that person touches it, and vice versa.
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