Diane Ackerman, "A Natural History of the Senses"

This is one of my favorite works of science writing, and I have real difficulty believing that it was first published in 1991.  Can it really have been 18 years?  When did I get old like that?

At any rate, Diane Ackerman has written many books since, but I still feel that A Natural History of the Senses remains her best.  Ackerman breaks her book down by sense (I'm sure you will not be surprised to learn) and then riffs on each sense in a manner which is engrossing, entertaining, and sometimes just gross.

A Natural History of the Senses is structured as a series of short essays, on topics as diverse as the etymological connection between most languages' words for "prostitute" and their words for "rotting smell," and a "sound poem" she once wrote to describe the song of humpback whales.

I can't help but contrast A Natural History of the Senses with the more recent books by Malcolm Gladwell.  Both offer the same easy reading, the constant drift from topic to topic, and the enthusiastic engagement of the author.  But Ackerman's book is all description, relaying data to the reader, while Gladwell spends his books drawing conclusions from the data.  The problem is that his conclusions are frequently wrong, off base, or just odd.  By simply describing the world, Ackerman retains an authority that Gladwell's books lack.

If A Natural History of the Senses has any failing, it is that Ackerman is sometimes a little too over the top.  The critical reviews I have read over the years tend to skewer the book for being "too romantic," her language too florid, her enthusiasms too… well, enthusiastic.  Even I have difficulty reading some passages without pausing to roll my eyes.  As when she relates, in the Smell chapter, the strength of her emotional reaction the first time she entered the ocean:

"As a human woman, with ovaries where eggs lie like roe, entering the smooth, undulating womb of the ocean from which our ancestors evolved millennia ago, I was so moved my eyes teared underwater, and I mixed my saltiness with the ocean's."

Thankfully, these moments where Ackerman's words run away with her are generally few and far between.  Nevertheless, this is not a dry science book which is content to merely describe the facts.  A Natural History of the Senses is a very personal book, one where Ackerman frequently talks about herself and her own relationship to the subject at hand.  Readers who are seeking a hard nosed book about human anatomy and sensory inputs would be better served elsewhere.

I once had a roommate who dismissed A Natural History of the Senses as being "science for Lit majors," and I can hardly argue with that description.  I think Ackerman herself would wear that description as a badge of pride, even though my roommate meant it as a put down.  

In a world where "science" is often a bad word, and "scientists" are frequently invoked with a sneer, A Natural History of the Senses may be just what we need.