David Howes

August 10, 2025, 8:08 PM

From page 131:

"In polite society, it is proper to ask, "Do you hear? Do you see? Do you taste? Do you feel? All of the imply acceptable modes of sensitivity. When have you heard someone ask, Do you smell? Isn't it interesting that a refined person is called a person of taste, not a person of smell. Smell takes us back to a deeper way of knowing. People who smell the world and one anoher are likely to do unpredictable or passionate things."

From page 131:

The association between smell and the limbic system explains why smells evoke memories, instinctive reactions, and feelings such as attraction or disgust or why sacred scents--incense in temples, sweetgrass in tipis--can awaken ancient ways of knowing. (see endnote #21 on page 362).

From page 362, endnote #21:

"For a bouquet of olfactory information and resources, contact the Olfactory Research fund, 145 East Thirty-second St., New York, NY 10016-6002; (212/725-2755).

See its

Compendium of Olfactory Research: Explorations in Aroma-Chology: Investigating the Sense of Smell and Human Response to Odors, 1982-1994.

The reader is also referred to the following excellent works:

David Howes, ed. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1991), and

Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnot, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (New York: Routledge, 1994).