Jaime B's Blog

Avery Gilbert put out a book not too long ago called What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life (New York, Crown Publishers: 2008. ISBN 978-1-4000-8234-6). It ranges over a variety of topics, but the one that interests me the most in this volume is the question of what makes a nose. The relevant chapters (should you want to consult the book) are 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 12.

Gilbert discusses the range of olfactory sensitivity and the ability to detect individual smells, variously regarded as molecules or more complex aggregations. He goes through various estimates ranging from about 4000 to 30,000 detectable smells for the sophisticated nose, and discusses the theories, types of measures, and experimental designs behind these numbers.

He then talks about other factors affecting olfactory acumen, considering that memory and linguistic ability (the capacity to remember and recall the names of identified odors) are equally important in developing a discriminating nose.

Gilbert also devotes some attention (I wish it were more) to the concept of "categorical perception." This is the ability, or perhaps more accurately the need, of the human mind to resolve continuous distribution of sensory data into discrete and nameable quanta to make possible the intellection (mental assimilation and subsequent intellectual manipulation) of sensory phenomena. Visual and auditory examples of this are the mind's resolution of the continuous color spectrum into discrete and nameable colors and the resolution of continuous variation in pitch into various divisions of musical octaves into (for example, five, eight or twelve) pitch intervals otherwise known as musical scales. The corresponding divisions of olfactory sensory data are less easily resolved into commonly recognized quanta or scalar schemes.

Beyond even this type of skill or understanding, Gilbert deals with the creative dimension of professional "noses." He speaks of the olfactory "imagination," the ability to foresee the results and effects of various novel combinations and proportions of different odor elements.

Gilbert suggests three psychological traits that make for "olfactory genius": awareness, empathy, and imagination.

The first is characterized by awareness of smells in the real world; habitual sniffers, people who stop to "smell the roses" (and other scents) exhibit behavior which suggests this sort of attention and awareness. According to GIlbert, this requires only an adequate nose, rather than a supersensitive one.

The second trait, empathy, he defines as a feel for how other people experience and respond to smell. In this regard, he faults perfumers for working in "regal isolation," and suggests that they should facilitate "live scenting clubs" where they could meet and listen to the reactions of their public to structured olfactory experiences.

The third psychological trait that makes for a good nose, imagination, he describes as skill at mental imagery. Gilbert says that perfumers, when asked to think of an odor, had more vivid smell imagery, but the same degree of visual imagery, as the typical person-in-the-street. Researchers found that more vivid smell imagery is linked to superior odor perception, suggesting that similar brain areas underlie both olfactory imagination and real smell perception.

For me, the area of empathy is especially telling. In my experience, people who feel driven to explore and discuss the reasons for their preferences and tastes in smell with others seem to be the ones who develop the sharpest understanding of the possibilities for imagining and evaluating olfactory creativity. This activity incidentally requires what we earlier discussed in terms of categorizing (categorical perception) and naming (linguistic ability) various factors in scent creation and sensation.

In my journeys through the world of scent appreciation, I have also found that increasing familiarity with the culture of perfumery (a knowledge of ingredients, sources, genres, culture, and history) enhances and sharpens this empathic ability and understanding.

Well, Basenotes is a community where some people come to engage these topics and issues and become more imaginative and knowledgeable connoisseurs of fragrance.

A lot of Gilbert's book, I must admit, was of little interest to me. Some of his discussions were less than riveting for me: a history of smell-o-vision in the cinematic arts and his discussion of near-future technological developments such as the e-nose (a hardware-software hybrid analysis tool for scents including training ability with artificial intelligence or neural-net aspects), for example.

For me, the science, theory, and philosophy (particularly epistemology) of odor were well worth an attentive read, while the other stuff was eminently skimmable.

What kind of nose would you like to be? What would it take to get there? What role would Basenotes be able to play in that adventure?