Only Five Senses? I Think Not.

     In a previous post I made an off-handed comment about our five senses not being the sum total of what we experience in the world.  But I was taught in science classes as a child that there are just five senses.  Just as I was taught that there were nine planets.  I took it as fact.  I didn't know how science worked.  I didn't understand the subtle distinction between fact and hypothesis.  As you know, science is a set of hypothesis based on observations.  It makes no value judgments.  Anything that has been proven can be disproved or expounded upon or altered.  It is how we grow, how man grows as a creature of intellect. Science gives us a framework for that.

      Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing.  The original five senses proposed by Aristotle were taught to me as the totality of human physical experience.  There are many more.  Most scientists now would be hard pressed not to propose as many as as many as fourteen to twenty senses.  The Harvard Medical School proposes six above the five I learned.  They mention  Equilibrioception - based on the Vestibular system in the inner ear we know if we are upright.  Nociception - a sense of "physical" pain, whatever physical means. Proprioception - knowing where your body parts are in relation to others.  This allows you to do things like touch your nose with your eyes closed.  Thermoception - a sense of heat and cold based on upon billions of sensors in your body.  Temporal perception - a sense of time.  This is a very interesting one, because it is subjective based on an area of the brain called the basal ganglia.  We know, actually, that time is relative.  Two objects travelling at widely different speeds experience the passage of time differently - a different amount of time passes for them. A sense of time is a creation of the brain and we measure it accordingly. But it also allows us to tie all the senses together.  All the experiences of green and smell and touch and taste within a certain amount of perceived time tell us that we are experiencing a green apple. Interoception - senses of the internal organs based on the sensors in them.  Many schools of thought offer many more.  And many animals have been shown to have senses that would could not have imagined just a few years ago.  Platypus and Sharks can sense changes in electric fields. Vampire bats and snakes can see infrared.  Dragonflies and bees can see in the ultraviolet.  Birds have a mechanism for sensing magnetic poles that help them navigate and migrate.

     What if there are more?  What if there is a spiritual sense or senses?  I would, to say the least, not be surprised.  What is it that makes the cold shivers down the back of your neck when you experience something awe-inspiring.  Or when you experience God in prayer?  What if God gave us the ability to sense him?  Wouldn't that be totally within the realm of possibility?  For many, it is not merely possible, it is an experiential reality.  They know they're in the presence of the Father (or however they perceive God) when the peace of God settles on them.  When he speaks to them in the still small voice in the quiet of their souls.  The eastern religions even speak of a third eye, a spiritual eye, that perceives the spirit world around us. I think we should not be so set on believing there are only five senses.  Maybe there is a "spiritual sense."  Wouldn't that be just like God, to build us to commune with him?  After all, the purpose of man, I believe is first and foremost to commune with God.  I believe this is our primary function.  All others follow.  It makes sense that he would build us with amazing capabilities to sense him in the world around us.