The Logics - Olfactory Perception The Sense of Smell

Abstract: The topic of olfactory perception has importance in all fields of study including biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, philosophy, logic, and the experience of life itself. The following article lightly touches on minor histories that include Darwinian interpretations of olfaction, with the Darwinian history being a foundation of modern biological and chemical interpretations. It is hoped that the article may lend a sufficient enough quantity of information and references so that an individual interested in the sense of smell might recognize that the topic is much more complex than is popularly believed.

The following six links jump to the different sections within this article.

History of Olfactory Perception
Darwin's View of Olfactory Perception
Normal Olfactory Perception
Modern Theories of Olfactory Perception
Musings on the Theories of Olfactory Perception
Examples of Acute Olfactory Perception

History of Olfactory Perception

        Long before Lao Zi and Gautama Buddha first spoke words of enlightenment, there existed individuals who attained manners of heightened awareness, and though the types of awareness are not listed in words alongside those of organized philosophies and ideologies, still the masters of each manner of awareness recognized the other masters, for the art of awareness exhibits itself not in words, but in what words are not spoken. In some forms of popular Zen it is taught to shun the senses, and the teachings are surely of benefit to many individuals, but Zen is not the ultimate teaching, and he who achieves mastery must achieve that which is greater than the teaching. The shunning of the senses may help some individuals to discover their own consciousness, but even so, if a man finds satisfaction and content with his first level of awareness, he will not achieve the second nor the greater states of awareness.

        It is an incorrect belief to assume that all men must begin life with a similar state of unawareness, and that all men must therefore follow the same path to awareness. The common teachings of Judaism, Tao, Buddhism, and Western philosophy are for the common students, but the uncommon teachings, not spoken with words, are for the uncommon students, and among the silent teachings are those that emphasize conscious awareness of sensorial perceptions.

        Within the many philosophies of man there exist three primary manners of interpretations: (1) that of the written word for men of words to memorize, (2) that of the guided teachings for men of ability to follow and to be led, (3) and that of the unwritten and unguided for the adept to acknowledge. The story of blind Isaac not being capable of discerning one son from another by the sense of touch and smell is typical of what is deemed to be a normal level of sensorial capacity for humans. An accomplished Zen master, though blind, can walk freely among a crowd because he is sensorially aware of his other senses. Accomplished masters of other manners of awareness are noted for their abilities to know the hearts of other men, to sense a man’s personality from a distance, and of the many perceptions that the masters might perceive, it is the normal unskilled public that invents the beliefs of miracles and supernatural powers, while the masters simply regard the talents as aware observations.

        The personal investigation and practise into the sense of smell is not new, and the main focus for the moment is to clarify that many individuals through the millennia have purposefully invested quantities of effort to achieve heightened states of sensorial perception, and it becomes an obvious thing that there will exist several levels of thought on the topic of olfactory perception.

        Aristotle’s Metaphysics, translated by W.D. Ross, states “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.” It is well acknowledged that man, from before the time of recorded history, has given his greater attention to the sense of sight, with little attention given to the sense of smell. If Aristotle had acquired a skill in olfaction, or of any other sensorial perception, he might have written that aromas can and do provide for greater details of objects than can sight alone.

Darwin's View of Olfactory Perception

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin: “The sense of smell is of the highest importance to the greater number of mammals--to some, as the ruminants, in warning them of danger; to others, as the Carnivora, in finding their prey; to others, again, as the wild boar, for both purposes combined.”

Darwin assumed too much. Darwin assumed that his personal imagination of non-human perceptions might be an accurate interpretation. Darwin incorrectly assumed, without evidence, that animals think and perceive scents the same as do humans. If the sense of smell has dramatic cognitive differences even among humans, then it is to be expected that non-humans may possess an even wider variance that humans have no knowledge of, nor experience with.

”But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in the white and civilised races.”

Again Darwin interpreted the quality and quantity of olfaction relative to his own personal abilities, rendering his conclusions as conjectures and inventions. Just because a man cannot smell a scent, one man’s lack of ability does not necessitate that all creatures must share a similar inability.

“(36. The account given by Humboldt of the power of smell possessed by the natives of South America is well known, and has been confirmed by others. M. Houzeau ('Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales,' etc., tom. i. 1872, p. 91) asserts that he repeatedly made experiments, and proved that Negroes and Indians could recognise persons in the dark by their odour.”

        The above quote is highly enlightening, for it lends evidence that if Darwin and his peers thought it was important to make note that non-Darwin-like races could recognize individuals by scent, then it implied that the Darwin-like races generally do not possess such a capacity. If the Darwin-like races did not possess the sensorial capacity to discern one individual’s aroma from another, then the Darwin-like races were not qualified to speak on the topic of olfactory perception.

        For many individuals it is a simple thing to recognize the different scents of different individuals, and to then recognize the different individuals by their scents. To attain the skill of discerning individuals by scent there first must exist the capacity for olfactory perception, then the mental acuity to consciously be aware of the sensorial perception, to mentally associate the aroma to the individual, to then place the perception into memory, and to then later retrieve the memory and logically associate the memory to a current perception. Each individual’s scent contains information of the individual’s health, age, gender, racial genetics, foods eaten, and most everything else about the person. The races that could detect individuals by scent exhibited higher levels of active real-world intelligence than what Darwin sketched for his own genetics.

        Sensorially acute individuals can discern a person’s gender from a distance of several feet away, and not only by smell, but by the felt radiance of body heat and the information within the radiance. The writings of Darwin’s are useful in their being evidence of how theories are sometimes born without the theorists themselves having an experience within the topic.

“Dr. W. Ogle has made some curious observations on the connection between the power of smell and the colouring matter of the mucous membrane of the olfactory region as well as of the skin of the body. I have, therefore, spoken in the text of the dark-coloured races having a finer sense of smell than the white races. See his paper, 'Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,' London, vol. liii. 1870, p. 276.) Nevertheless it does not warn them of danger, nor guide them to their food; nor does it prevent the Esquimaux from sleeping in the most fetid atmosphere, nor many savages from eating half-putrid meat.”

Darwin simply invented his conclusions. Do all individuals recognize all dangers with the eyes? And if not, then must there be a similar conclusion as Darwin’s, that a man’s eyes are of no value? Not all men are created identical, and just because some men might not use the senses they are born with, it does not imply that all men must be identically limited of mind and body. No race, including Darwin’s, is so uniform and flawless that all of its individuals abstain from living within the most filthy of environments.

“In Europeans the power differs greatly in different individuals, as I am assured by an eminent naturalist who possesses this sense highly developed, and who has attended to the subject. Those who believe in the principle of gradual evolution, will not readily admit that the sense of smell in its present state was originally acquired by man, as he now exists. ....He inherits the power in an enfeebled and so far rudimentary condition, from some early progenitor, to whom it was highly serviceable, and by whom it was continually used.”

Again Darwin simply invented a conclusion without first possessing reasonable evidence, but it does appear plausible that man is devolving of mind and body.

“In those animals which have this sense highly developed, such as dogs and horses, the recollection of persons and of places is strongly associated with their odour; and we can thus perhaps understand how it is, as Dr. Maudsley has truly remarked (37. 'The Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 2nd ed. 1868, p. 134.), that the sense of smell in man "is singularly effective in recalling vividly the ideas and images of forgotten scenes and places.”

Singularly effective in recalling forgotten scenes and places? The book did not make mention of the many beneficial uses of olfactory perception, which leads the reader to assume that perhaps Darwin and many of his peers were not aware of what the sense of smell encompasses.

“The inferiority of Europeans, in comparison with savages, in eyesight and in the other senses, is no doubt the accumulated and transmitted effect of lessened use during many generations;”

It appears convenient to excuse-away one’s inferiority through the claiming that the individual has no choice but to be restricted to his genetics, but such is not the case with real-world individuals who, of similar racial genetics as Darwin’s, have exhibited and validated that their eyesight is of a superiority beyond what Darwin deemed possible. Darwin simply did not know useful information about sensorial perceptions, and thus his conclusions were excessively flawed.

“…states that he has repeatedly observed Europeans, who had been brought up and spent their whole lives with the wild Indians, who nevertheless did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses. The same naturalist observes that the cavities in the skull for the reception of the several sense-organs are larger in the American aborigines than in Europeans; and this probably indicates a corresponding difference in the dimensions of the organs themselves.”

The materialistic interpretation attempts to reduce all things down to a level of physical matter as being the sole measure of all abilities. As the links below will help to illustrate, science is now finally recognizing that all sensorial perceptions are influenced by all things else including diet and the individual’s own personal emotions and mind-set. It is not a racial trait that enables a man to sensorially perceive a thing with acuity, but rather it is a combination of many things, including intellectual will.

“Blumenbach has also remarked on the large size of the nasal cavities in the skulls of the American aborigines, and connects this fact with their remarkably acute power of smell. The Mongolians of the plains of northern Asia, according to Pallas, have wonderfully perfect senses; and Prichard believes that the great breadth of their skulls across the zygomas follows from their highly-developed sense organs.”

The book’s ideas are structured upon a materialistic interpretation, and the interpretation is void of the knowledge that individuals with superior sensorial perceptions are often of the smaller nasal cavities. Darwin’s theories were based upon a simplistic mathematics, where theories were formed upon the believing that greater size might somehow infer greater quality.

“…It will suffice for our purpose to refer to the arrested brain-development of microcephalous idiots, as described in Vogt's memoir. …Their skulls are smaller, and the convolutions of the brain are less complex than in normal men. The frontal sinus, or the projection over the eye-brows, is largely developed, and the jaws are prognathous to an "effrayant" degree; so that these idiots somewhat resemble the lower types of mankind. Their intelligence, and most of their mental faculties, are extremely feeble. They cannot acquire the power of speech, and are wholly incapable of prolonged attention, but are much given to imitation. …Idiots also resemble the lower animals in some other respects; thus several cases are recorded of their carefully smelling every mouthful of food before eating it. …They are often filthy in their habits, and have no sense of decency; and several cases have been published of their bodies being remarkably hairy. (37. Prof. Laycock sums up the character of brute-like idiots by calling them "theroid;" 'Journal of Mental Science,' July 1863. Dr. Scott ('The Deaf and Dumb,' 2nd ed. 1870, p. 10) has often observed the imbecile smelling their food.”

A comment, sarcastic as it might be, that I made in my notes while reading Darwin’s Descent: “An interesting observation those are, that the “imbecile” is associated with the smelling of food prior to eating, and yet previously Darwin alluded to the so-called inferior mind being one that did not smell food before eating. Hopefully the two variances simply did not know to, or think, to include the additional observances of mannerisms associated to eating, such as style, speed, and mechanical movements that separate the imbecile from the uncaring individual who does not smell his food before eating, which includes negroes and “civilised” man in the same category. Surely, it is hoped, that all men smell their food prior to eating, and though the “civilised” races appear to have lost the ability for conscious sensory perception, that their brains are still at least subconsciously aware of aromas and what the aromas represent.”

“To return to our immediate subject: the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber (7. 'Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis,' 1810, p. 173.), who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies.”

Another comment in my notes: “How pleasing it is to see this! With great sadness do I reflect upon the youth of this current generation, who in the 21st century do not know that there is friendship and playfulness in animals, and even insects. Our young are raised to be ignorant of Nature, to see nothing, to smell nothing, to feel nothing, to taste nothing, to hear nothing. Our young are taught from birth to learn mathematics and words, without our young being given the opportunity to understand what the words and symbols might mean. Our young have no true concept of what Nature is, and if it were not for the blue sky and an occasional cloud, our young may not even be capable of knowing we exist as creatures in a non-human-made environment. It is no surprise that humanity has polluted and all but destroyed the planet, for after all, a person cannot protect what he does not know to exist.”

“Houzeau relates (24. 'Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' 1872, tom. ii. p. 265.) that, whilst crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.”

There is indeed a scent of moisture in hollows. I myself have lived within an arid region of Texas, and I am fully familiar with the scents of distant moisture in hollows. Perhaps a thirsty dog might hope to find water where there exists a scent and tactile perception of moisture, but a human should possess sufficient intelligence to discern the differences of scents to rationalize where there might exist water in the soil, on top of the soil, or as vapor.

The above quotes from Darwin’s Descent were given so as to illustrate that the foundation of modern thought was – in part – structured by individuals who were inexperienced and not qualified to speak of the topic. Darwin’s materialistic interpretations cannot now, nor ever, be valid.

Normal Olfactory Perception

        An unexpected but welcomed bit of information arrived from the very unlikely source of Richard Dawkins' Darwinist book The God Delusion. From page 417: “I’ve speculated & that bats may ‘see’ colour with their ears. …The point is that the nature of the model is governed by how it is to be used rather than by the sensory modality involved.”

        The quote by The God Delusion is actually quite useful. The description is useful for the general public to perhaps catch a glimpse of how some life-forms – including humans – may interpret their sense of hearing; that of intensities of frequencies and denseness and speeds, emotionally sensed perhaps not too dissimilar as to what humans emotionally sense when mentally interpreting colors, but self-created like a metaphorical concept of the variations of intensities that are light waves. The sense of smell can be similar, in that it is not always the sensing itself, but rather how the sense is used and interpreted. Most humans appear to be passive in their sensorial perceptions, only becoming conscious of perceptions that overpower the mind and force the consciousness to become aware of the perception, but some individuals purposefully and consciously ‘listen’ for details within all senses, and thus are aware of much more than what the typical human may believe to exist.

        Page 418: “A dog that had never met capric acid would perhaps have no more trouble imagining its smell than we would have trouble imagining a trumpet playing one note higher than we have head a trumpet play before. It seems to me entirely reasonable to guess that a dog, or a rhinoceros, might treat mixtures of smells as harmonious chords. Perhaps there are discords. Probably not melodies, for melodies are built up of notes that start or stop abruptly with accurate timing, unlike smells.”

        Again very good, and I was personally very pleased and with gratitude to have found the words in print because the words describe to me an attribute of normalcy, that of a normal human not being capable of self-creating a conscious sensation of higher and lower wave-frequencies of aromas, nor of a normal human recognizing the ‘chords’ within complex aromas. To better clarify, however, for some individuals a complexity of simultaneous aromas is not a ‘chord,’ as in several different frequencies resonating in harmony, but rather there is a different recognition of the pattern, one that I will not elaborate on here beyond stating that the cognition of the scents is similar to what was mentioned as the introduction into this article.

The cactus flower radiates slowly,
the radiance higher than browns,
lower than yellows,
heavier than reds,
there exists a balancing of weights,
that describe the vibrance,
that is violet.

        Countless times I have asked various individuals for information of whether they can self-create sensorial sensations that describe higher and lower ‘notes’ of perceptions, but except for my wife, never did anyone reply. I suspected that the inability for most humans to become conscious of varying degrees of sensorial focus was the reason why western philosophy could never discover the origin of ethics, and now with The God Delusion presenting the thought that humans normally cannot sense and mentally discern variances of olfactory waves, I am of a strengthened opinion that my suspicion was likely valid.

        Nevertheless, it is observable that humans do in fact perform mental weighings of sensorial perceptions, but usually only subconsciously and at a very low ebb. Humans would not be capable of driving automobiles if not for the ability to mentally weigh sensorial perceptions, and it has been an interesting project to calculate percentiles of trends of intellectual capacity by observing how humans drive. A recent entertaining observation was of a line of traffic along about a ten mile stretch of highway where the center and left lanes had been closed for repair. I counted the times that about thirty vehicles in front of me hit their brakes, which was between fifty to one-hundred times for each of the vehicles, while I only had to touch my brakes once. Surely it would be possible for most of the other drivers to have driven more rationally if they were instructed to do so, but the event illustrated the human tendency to behave relative to an emotion of selfish impatience rather than to act upon conscious reasoning. If the typical human will not apply effort to drive at a uniform speed, or to save on gasoline, or to save on brake replacements, or to maintain safe distances between vehicles, then of course the typical human will not apply effort to being conscious of any sensorial perception, and the word ‘typical’ must therefore also be connected with the individuals whose vocations may be in the sciences of biology, for if the individuals were not as common as the most common of humans, then the individuals would have long ago known the natures of ethics and olfaction.

        Of the several importances within this topic is that the purposeful conscious investigation into a sensorial perception – especially one like the olfactory – is a portion of the self-training that an individual may accomplish while mastering a religion or philosophy, and it should always be an accomplishment of all individuals whose aim is to learn of Nature, science, and biology. Without an individual having mastered their own sensory perceptions – and thus be capable of readily describing in detail how the various types of perceptions are altered by emotions and self-controlled focus – the individual cannot know much of anything within science or biology.

        Without an individual recognizing his/her own manner of sensorial perception, it is not possible for the individual to rationalize how the sensorial perception might function, and thus the many myths were born, those of solid molecules being the sole cause of olfaction, those of greater nasal size equating to greater sense of smell, and the many other popular scientific beliefs that are as easily verified as untrue.

        A simple example that helps to illustrate one of the byproducts of self-observation is one’s ability to sensorially recognize another person’s health and personality from a distance. The Bible story of Nathanael in John 1:47-50 is useful as an example: “Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.”

        In the Bible story, as remains common today, people often leap to believe that any person’s ability to sense a thing that the common person cannot perceive, must imply some form of magical paranormal/supernatural power. There is nothing miraculous about smelling a person’s health at a distance, nor is there anything miraculous about many of the other Bible stories, including that of healing some forms of blindness by touch.

        At the heart of some religions and non-western philosophies are practices – that if the public would allow them to be spoken of – would give a tremendous quantity of light into numerous topics that modern science would profit from, especially psychology and biology. By The God Delusion attempting to destroy all religions and most everything connected to religions, the book unknowingly attempted to destroy the only known method of advancing western science beyond its current limitations, and rather ironically, the book also attempted to obliterate the scientific evidence that some of the ‘miracles’ were actually quite normal things that most any healthy human can do if the individual first masters the self-observation. The reason for presenting the previous three paragraphs will become obvious during the last section of this article.

        The God Delusion, written by one of the world's most popular biologists, lends evidence that the normal person's olfactory potential is not intellectually rationalized abstractly. It has always been known that there exists variances of individuals' ability to intellectually manipulate numerous simultaneous thoughts and memories, with some individuals being capable of analyzing multiple thoughts simultaneously while other individuals are not able to analyze more than one thought at a time, but until recently I had no publicly acceptable reference to support what 'normal' might imply.

Modern Theories of Olfactory Perception

        As with a most elementary law of Nature, no thing exists alone, separate from all others, for nothing in the Universe arrived into existence by itself, and neither will anything ever exist in solitude. Olfactory perception, the sense of smell, exists as a tactile perception whose nature is colored by the influences of a multitude of simultaneously occurring events.

        Emotions influence and color all perceptions, as do the perceptions influence and color all emotions. All acts of life and Nature influence all other acts, and never can it be said that the act of olfactory perception occurs under a single cause. The degree of conscious attentiveness that an individual applies to a sensorial perception will in turn heighten or lessen the degree of memory retention of the perception, as will the quality of the memory in turn influence the quality and quantity of logic when the perception is compared and weighed to a future perception.

        The Universe is wave-based, there does not exist solid matter, nor solid molecules, and therefore all manners of perception are based upon a sensing of waves. (See also William James Sidis _ When A prodigy is Not a Prodigy for additional information about wave-based physics.) The sense of sound is the tactile perception of waves of air, as is sight the tactile perception of light waves, and in all things in Reality, all perceive through a manner of tactile perception. Though humans may have segregated sensorial perceptions into five or more senses, and then applied nouns to each, that of sight, sound, taste, smell, and feel, still each of the sensorial perceptions exist as a means of a living creature to perceive its world, and perhaps a more holistic interpretation of the senses is that each one perceives the same things, waves, but each of the five senses are tuned to perceive specific ranges of wave frequencies.

        The purpose of this article is to illustrate the most common of beliefs about olfactory perception, and to then lend additional information that illustrates how the sense of smell does not exist in solitude by itself, as if a materialistic mechanical act, but rather there exist many entertaining observations that suggest that the human creature does in fact exist within the Universe of waves, and that the human may have far greater potential for perceiving his world than what he has been led to believe.

        Under the key-phrases of “olfactory perception” and “sense of smell” I searched the first one-hundred entries on a search engine, and below I have given a brief comment on all of the best links. It is recommended that each link be clicked on where the original article can be read in its entirety.

        Microsoft Encarta has a good short basic article on the sense of smell.

        The Physiology of Perception by Walter J. Freeman: “My own group's studies, carried out over more than 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley, suggest that perception cannot be understood solely by examining properties of individual neurons, a microscopic approach that currently dominates neuroscience research. We have found that perception depends on the simultaneous, cooperative activity of millions of neurons spread throughout expanses of the cortex. Such global activity can be identified, measured and explained only if one adopts a macroscopic view alongside the microscopic one.” (February 1991 Scientific American, Vol 264, (2) Pgs. 78-85.)

        As Freeman correctly stated, it is incorrect to believe that a manner of perception occurs through a singular neuron, as if a specific mechanical bit of information were being transmitted through a singular telephone wire. The popular belief, that all senses are perceived through singular paths of neurons, is incorrect.

        Olfactory Perception by Amir Madany Mamlouk: “This thesis introduces a new approach to mapping the so-called “olfactory perception space”, which is the structure that organizes olfactory perceptions according to a certain (so far unknown) system. The main goal of mapping this space is to improve the understanding of the sense of smell.”

        As Mamlouk correctly pointed to, regardless of what a student may have been told in school, there does not yet exist in science a fullness of understanding of how the sense of smell occurs.

        Rachel Herz, PhD at Brown University: “My general research interest is olfactory cognition and emotion. Experimental topics that I am currently pursuing include: (1) comparing odor-associated memory with memory mediated through other sensory systems (2) the influence of emotion in the formation of odor associations (3) how odors can become conditioned to emotions and influence behavior (4) how context and language influence olfactory perception and (5) how sensory information is perceived and evaluated differently by men and women in their sexual strategies. The underlying theme of my research is to understand how biological mechanisms and cognitive processes interact and influence perception, cognition and behavior. My experimental approach incorporates both cognitive-behavioral and neuropsychological techniques.”

        Herz’s comments are useful in illustrating that it is known that the sense of smell influences an individual’s emotions and intellect, as do the emotions and intellect influence the sense and interpretation of smell. Nothing in the Universe exists by itself, including molecules.

        Influences of Olfactory Experience and Learning on Odor Perception and Odor Processing in the Human Brain Based on research presented at the 2007 AChemS meeting with support from the 2007 Science of Fragrance Award by Jay A. Gottfried, MD, PhD : “There is a prevalent assumption guiding contemporary research in olfactory neuroscience: the perception of a smell is a direct outcome of its chemical and molecular properties. However, increasing behavioral evidence suggests that cognitive factors, such as learning, experience, and sensory context, play an equally important role in how humans perceive the quality or character of a smell.”

        Gottfried’s comments further illustrate the Nature-based logic that all things are influenced and colored by all things else, including the sense of smell. As the Sensory Quotient (SQ) test illustrated, intelligence can be observed through one’s capacity for sensorial perception, and one’s acuity of SQ is directly proportional to one’s conscious intelligence.

        Research: Olfactory Sensory Physiology by Donald A. Wilson has an interesting graphic that illustrates how olfactory perception is triggered during inhalation. The graphic portrays the concept that the sense of smell occurs when air is drawn into the nose from outside the body, and if the concept were complete, then the act of smelling would indeed be concluded to be of some manner of a perception of airborne molecules. It is useful to retain the memory of the graphic, and to compare the memory to information presented later in this article.

        Harvard Medical School Department of Neurobiology, Wilson Lab has several useful PDF files available for reading.

        Neural and Behavioral Mechanisms of Olfactory Perception by Rachel I Wilson: “These events are relatively well understood for some sensory modalities – especially vision – and much less well understood in olfaction. Olfaction is an important topic in its own right because it has a crucial importance in the lives of many organisms. Moreover, by comparing olfactory processing with processing in other sensory modalities, we are more likely to grasp which principles are fundamental to sensory processing in general, and which are peculiar to a specific modality.”

        Wilson further supports the academic stance that science does not yet well understand the sense of smell, but Wilson’s comments also lend evidence that the average individual may not believe that the sense of smell is much important. Wilson’s comments find a greater voice within a different link below by Batty.

        Useful for additional reading is Olfactory Coding in the Mammalian Olfactory Bulb by Michael Leon and Brett A. Johnson, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California.

        Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, W. S. Bainbridge (Ed.), Berkshire Publishing, pp. 507-511, 2004. Olfactory Interaction (draft) by Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna, Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University: “Odorants are volatile compounds with low molecular weight (30-300 Dalton), typically organic, hydrophobic and polar [2]. When odorant molecules reach the olfactory epithelium, a small patch of tissue located at the roof of each nasal cavity, they stimulate a large population (100M) of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs). This initiates a chain of biochemical and electrical signals that results in the sensation that we know as an odor. The olfactory pathway can be divided into three general subsystems: (1) olfactory epithelium, where primary reception takes place, (2) olfactory bulb, where an organized olfactory image is formed and, (3) olfactory cortex, where odor associations are stored.”

        The above article provides an excellent coverage of today’s most popular theories of olfactory perception.

        Sense of Smell Institute has a good three part lesson on olfactory perception.

        The Sense of Smell: “Within two weeks, a baby can recognize the scent of it's mothers milk and distinguish it between stranger's milk.” This is a good article to be as a reminder that babies can smell and remember scents, which opposes a popular belief that infants cannot create nor possess long term memories. It is important that the reader gives attention to the comparing of the beliefs within the many different fields of science, so that the reader can recognize the contradictions that often plague society with myths and absurdities.

        The links above lend evidence that the most popular theories about olfactory perception are based upon the concept that olfactory receptors perceive the presence of molecules, and that the information is sent to the brain where the information is interpreted to be as a scent. The following two links speak of a newer theory by Luca Turin that promotes the concept that it is not so much the shape of a molecule that is being perceived, but rather the molecule’s vibration.

        Neurophilosophy, The Quantum Mechanics of Smell: “The human nose, while not as sensitive as, say, that of a dog, can still detect very low concentrations of odorant molecules as they diffuse through the air…
        It has always been assumed that olfactory receptors function in the same way as other receptors – via the ‘lock and key’ mechanism. According to this well established model for the interaction of a receptor with its ligand (the molecule which binds to it), the receptor recognizes the three-dimensional shape of the ligand, and can only be activated by that specific molecule. Thus, in most cases, signal transduction begins with a molecular recognition event.
        In the case of olfaction, however, there is a problem. A finite number of olfactory receptors recognize a seemingly infinite number of odorant molecules. So, although the shape and size of odorants is known to be important, olfactory receptors must also be detecting some other property of the odorants.
        In the mid-1990s, Luca Turin, a biophysicist who was then at University College London, proposed a novel mechanism for olfactory receptor transduction…
        …olfactory receptors respond not to the shape of the molecules but to their vibrations. [The theory provides] a detailed and plausible mechanism for biological transduction of molecular vibrations: in elastic electron tunnelling.”

        The Turin theory allows for the recognition of a wave-based Universe, and thus, is already an acceptable choice.

        Please read the full article at the following link. It is quite useful. Press cutting: Rogue theory of smell gets a boost by Philip Ball: “A controversial theory of how we smell, which claims that our fine sense of odour depends on quantum mechanics, has been given the thumbs up by a team of physicists.
        Calculations by researchers at UCL show that the idea that we smell odour molecules by sensing their molecular vibrations makes sense in terms of the physics involved…
        Turin’s explanation for these smelly facts invokes the idea that the smell signal in olfactory receptor proteins is triggered not by an odour molecule’s shape, but by its vibrations…
        This would explain why isotopes can smell different: their vibration frequencies are changed if the atoms are heavier…
        Vibration-assisted electron tunnelling can undoubtedly occur – it is used in an experimental technique for measuring molecular vibrations…”

        Luca Turin's Theory of the Sense of Smell by Thayer Watkins is another interesting article, albeit appearing to be unfinished at present.

        Well of course Turin’s theory is the more sensible of the two, even if Turin's theory is limited to the presence of molecules and the perception of vibrations within an infra-red range. Why was there ever a question? Why was biology ever kept segregated from physics? A wave-based Universe includes all things, including living creatures, and there is no such thing as a solid object, whether it be a molecule or a neuron. It has been an incorrect choice that the science of biology has continued even to today without an admission to the science of physics.

        Various claims have been stated that some researchers have attempted to prove or disprove Turin's theory by having normal untrained individuals participate in olfactory experiments. To my knowledge the publicized results have claimed that Turin's theory must be incorrect since the participants did not smell differences of odors. As the SQ test verified, well over 99.9% of the general human population cannot consciously recognize a sensorial perception beyond the most rudimentary, and if over 99.9% of the population is naturally limited in sensorial cognition, then of course the results of the experiments would conclude that the normal untrained individual would not recognize differences. It is an unfair and biased research project that purposefully selects participants who hold no potential for discerning variances of aromas, and thus it is important to clarify that the claims against Turin's theory may not have been validated themselves.

        As the above links give ample and obvious evidence, there is no current popular conclusion of how the sense of smell occurs. In a Universe structured upon waves, it is not proper thought for any field of inquiry to ignore the structuring of all things, as if it were possible that physical molecules floated within the air, and that physical molecules were perceived by physical olfactory receptors. Just because a field of science is termed a thing other than physics, it does not permit that the other field can then claim that the rules of physics no longer apply.

        An Experimental Disproof of Special Relativity Theory (Unipolar Induction) by Francisco J. Muller provides a good graphic that helps to illustrate the inductance of rotating bodies. Are not molecules spinning? Are not electrons spinning? Waved energy is not a linear movement, but rather exists with rotation, and the concept of no-spacetime is observable within a rotating sphere. "...distinguishing a minute angular oscillation from a minute linear translation, at light years away... and instantly!" If a possibility exists in physics, then so will the possibility exist within biology.

        From this author's book Reality: "the analog waves are not simply flowing in one direction at a time, the whole sphere itself is inwardly spinning. ...In Reality, instead of the universe being a circle, it is as a spinning fluid bubble where information is being shared throughout the bubble. ...although torsion waves are not thought by science to contain energy, they do carry information of a spinning object." Instantaneous information exchange throughout the Universe is very real, and not dependent on materialistic molecules.

        While previous links illustrated the common materialistic view of olfactory perception, Lessons In Smelling _ Essays on Olfactory Perception by Clare Batty is an excellent and very important link. Batty’s dissertation is a philosophical approach and it is extraordinarily useful in how it clearly presents examples of how humans most commonly interpret the sense of smell. Though it might appear that surely the information about normal perceptions ought to be common knowledge, the fact is, there is precious little information publicly available about normalcy. Batty’s dissertation is dated July 23, 2007, which proves increasingly useful since the paper provides recent information and at a Ph.D. level from the prestigious university of MIT.

        I would enjoy giving a thorough commentary about Batty’s work, but within the word-count limitations of this article such a commentary is not possible. Instead, I will point to a few interesting points while suggesting that everyone reads the full dissertation for themselves.

        On page 7 a reference is made to sight being of a “mosaic of apparent three-dimensional objects” compared to page 12’s “…brewing coffee, the smell does not… occupy more or less determinate locations & the smell simply pervades.” This item is very important, for in my studies, and of what little information I have been capable of gleaning from the public, the typical human does not perceive dimensionalities within olfactory perception. Though a person might be capable of discerning from what direction a strong odor is arriving if the individual turns their head to face the odor-producing object, still the individual is not likely to mentally construct a dimensional presence of aroma, that is, the individual will not mentally perceive the aroma’s distance of origin, the aroma’s intensity relative to the origin’s intensity, nor the aroma’s spatial deflections within the environment. Without an individual giving conscious attention to the perception of an aroma, and thus permitting the creation of memories of aromas from different distances and directions and intensities, the individual will not later be capable of producing a logic based upon the need for memories to be weighed relative to a current olfactory perception, and thus the lack of conscious attention at one point in life renders the individual incapable of mental discernment of future olfactory perceptions.

        Also, as Scientific Method – Twelve Logic Steps as a Methodology of Investigation illustrates, without a creative mental and emotional stance there will be little or no mental cognition of a sensorial perception. Humans typically approach the topic of olfactory perception with disinterest and biased opinions, which render the individual incapable of accurate sensorial perceptions.

        On page 9 a reference is made to the gypsy moth, that “is able to detect the pheromones of the female & from several miles away.” Remember this little tidbit for when the topic is raised later in this article, for it is an important common belief that illustrates some of modern biology’s miscalculations.

        Page 10: “Not all auditory experiences are directional or determinately spatial…” I have learned that some individuals cannot mentally discern dimensional structurings of sound waves as determined by hearing how the sound varies relative to its bouncing from the sides and backsides of objects. By hearing the variances of sound, as is in part suggested by the Doppler Effect, the sense of hearing is capable of discerning the presence of objects, as well as the objects’ densities and temperatures and compositions, as bats may similarly perceive objects through the perception of sound waves. Humans typically give little to no conscious thought and analysis about sensorial perceptions, and thus it is to be expected that the individuals may not be capable of discerning the nature of any.

        Page 12 continues with “There is some evidence that humans can localize odor sources in highly controlled circumstances… But these circumstances are the exception, not the rule, and do not represent the typical experiences of human subjects in their environment. For this reason I will not consider them here.” Batty correctly referenced the existence of individuals with acute sensorial perceptions, and Batty correctly stated the disclaimer that the dissertation was restricted to the topic of common olfactory perception by what are deemed to be normal individuals.

        So now it is useful to bring back into thought the popular belief about physical molecules and the tidbit of information about the gypsy moth. From the University of Illinois' Focus on Plant Problems it is stated that “The adult males are out several days before the female. The male can "smell" a female from as much as a mile away.” I personally do not know if a male gypsy moth can smell a mate at one inch or one-hundred miles away, but for the sake of generalities let us assume that the moth can smell a potential mate at about a mile or more away.

        Now if the USDA fact sheet is correct, then female moths have a maximum of about a two inch wing span: “With a wingspread of up to 2 inches, female moths are much larger than males, but they do not fly.” One mile is about 63,360 inches, or about the distance of 31,680 female moths spread wing tip to wing tip. Regardless of an olfactory receptor’s capacity for detecting small quantities of molecules, if the molecular theory for olfactory perception were true, then the male moth’s potential for smelling a female moth from a mile away is still limited to the male moth’s capacity for detecting molecules. Obviously, the female moth must expel a sufficient enough quantity of pheromone molecules for all male moths within a spherical mile to perceive.

        Extreme Sensitivity in an Olfactory System by Anna Maria Angioy, Alessandro Desogus, Iole Tomassini Barbarossa, Peter Anderson and Bill S. Hansson: “We recorded olfactory-induced cardiac responses to evaluate olfactory response thresholds to behaviourally relevant odours in a moth. Specific antennal receptor neurons enable insects to detect biologically meaningful odours such as sex pheromones and host-plant volatiles. The response threshold values demonstrated here are well below anything earlier reported in any organism. A heart response was triggered by less than six molecules of the most efficient odours hitting the antennae of the insect. The behavioural significance of this extreme sensitivity most likely lies in the creation of awareness and readiness to respond behaviourally at higher concentration levels.”

        According to the article, about six molecules must be present for the one specific individual insect to initially “smell” a potential mate. How long of a duration exists before a moth’s detection of a pheromone molecule will cause the singular molecule perception to fade? Must the six molecules be perceived in sequence within, say, ten seconds? The previous question is meant to ask for additional information so that it might be possible to rationalize how many molecules the female moth must emit within a specific time frame.

        The last sentence in the quote is quite excellent and deserves repeating: “The behavioural significance of this extreme sensitivity most likely lies in the creation of awareness and readiness to respond behaviourally at higher concentration levels.” If only it were possible for popular opinion to accept the concept that humans too require mental awareness and a readiness to respond to sensorial perceptions, and that it ought to be recognized that the lack of awareness and readiness will result in the lack of sensorial acuity, and thus, a lessening of information necessary for rational thought. (See also Scientific Method – Twelve Logic Steps as a Methodology of Investigation.) While living in a remote rural area, I repeatedly observed wild animals not responding to threatening aromas until after the odors were of a relatively high intensity. It seemed very peculiar to me that the scents I smelled, which described a threat to the animals, were not detected and/or reacted upon by the animals until the danger was very close, to within two to three-hundred yards. Though it may be popularly believed that most animals have a keener sense of smell than humans, it has been observed that some humans are more sensorially acute than many animals, and the cause of the differences is largely due to focused awareness.

Musings on the Theories of Olfactory Perception

        A difficulty with the concept of physical molecules floating about in the air is due, in part, to the requirement of the female moth to excrete a sufficient enough quantity of pheromones for a male moth to smell the female at a mile or more away, which implies that the female’s molecules must occupy a diameter of no less than two miles and at a depth of at least ten to twenty feet deep for a distant male moth in a tree to perceive the molecules. That is a lot of pheromones! If there are about 63,360 inches in one mile, then 4,014,489,600 square inches times pi equals about 12,605,497,344 square inches in the one mile radius. Multiplying the surface area by 240 to allow twenty feet of depth for male moths in trees to perceive the molecules, the total sums to around 3,025,319,362,560, and multiplied by no fewer than six to permit male detection, the final sum is about 18,151,916,175,360 pheromone molecules that the female must secrete for an undetermined duration of time. I am not a biologist, nor have I performed the necessary experiments myself to determine the quantity and duration of pheromone secretions of a female moth, and so I do not know if the articles presented an accurate concept of whether a male moth can actually smell a female at a mile away, or if it might only be a few moths downwind, or perhaps only one moth gets lucky enough to be in the direct path of the female’s airborne pheromones.

        The math, of course, is merely a logical weighing of how many molecules a female must secrete to exist within each cubic inch within the one mile radius, and math can never make a thing true, but the numbers do help to illustrate that we, the public, are not being given sufficient information to base a rational conclusion upon. “A” male moth may smell “a” female moth once from a mile away, but a one-time event does not infer that “all” male moths smell “all” female moths from up to a mile away. There are too many unanswered questions for anyone to rationally accept the claim that male moths can smell the molecules from female moths from a distance of a mile away. If, as one article suggested, human researchers planted female pheromones onto a male, then where was the female at the time? One foot away, or one-thousand miles away? A further clarification of each claim is required before there can be an acceptable conclusion of any.

        Too, if olfactory perception were truly only the perception of molecules, then the male moth would have no means of determining from what direction the molecules arrived, and thus, the male moth would not have the capacity to know which direction to fly to find the female. A normal human may rationalize the source of an odor by sniffing many different things and places to determine where the odor is the strongest, and then mentally conclude that the greatest intensity of odor signifies the likely source of the odor, but if a male moth is a mile away and only perceives six to sixty-thousand or so molecules one time, then how might the moth know from where the molecules originated? Must there either be a continual stream of molecules for the moth to determine varying degrees of intensities, and if so, then must not the female be secreting the very high quantity of pheromones on a frequent or continual basis – of which is strongly suspected that the female moth would not be biologically capable of producing such a high quantity of pheromones – or might there be a different explanation for the long distance olfactory perception?

Examples of Acute Olfactory Perception

        A useful example that illustrates differences in olfactory perception is a personal experience while sitting near the top of a cliff. The sitting location was approximately 350 yards to the south of a dirt road. The photograph shows the layout of the land, the small sandstone cliffs rising about fifty feet above the road, a car parked on the road, and a house that is located within about twenty-five yards across the dirt road. The wind speed varied at about ten to thirty miles per hour, and the direction of the wind was from the cliffs towards the road. While enjoying the warm and sunny winter day, my lazily soaking up the warmth of the sandstone and the soothing environment, an overwhelming stench pervaded my senses, of an intensity not too dissimilar to that of standing at the fence of an overpopulated stockyard. The stench described numerous details, including old cotton blue jeans soiled with decades-old automotive greases and oils combined with various types of clay dirt from different areas of the region, plus the body odors of an overweight unbathed man in a typical chronological physical age of his sixties who eats too much low quality meats, whose health is fair at best, who has a lower than average intelligence, and among the many other descriptions perceived within the scent was that of an obese female, of a slightly younger age than the man, not married to the man, but who with a similar degree of uncleanliness also had increasing health problems common among individuals in their sixties and later, primarily that which I personally term a state of cellular degeneration where the body’s cells are losing their structural integrity and allowing cellular fluids to escape.

        The stench was very strong, very strong, so intense that I began feeling physically nauseated. The stench was one where the odor is not greatly attenuated while exhaling; the stench continued regardless of whether I inhaled or exhaled. My first thought may have been to suspect that the nearest neighbor upwind from my location, about six-hundred to eight-hundred yards to my south, might have arrived on his land, but upon my recognizing the manner of perception, I then realized that the aroma was indeed from a source located over a land mass, but not from upwind. Before I had time to fully interpret the aroma’s exact direction, a car appeared on the road before me, the car traveling towards my right, coming into view from behind a hill to my left. The car’s windows were rolled up, and though I could not see the individuals within the car, by that time I had determined that the source of the stench was indeed from the car’s interior.

        I will skip over the details of what thoughts ran through my head over the next few minutes, and jump to the event of my walking towards the man, where at about two-hundred yards distant I felt as though I might faint from the increasing stench. I was relieved, however, that when about twenty-five yards from the man, the stench subsided in its intensity of one type, while the stench increased its intensity of a second type. The second type of stench is of the normal manner of smelling particles (molecules) of an object. At the closer range I was able to endure the stench with little discomfort while verifying that my earlier perceptions of the man were correct. Though the man and I stood about twenty-five yards from the vehicle, with focused attention I visually observed the female within the car, and confirmed my previous perceptions of her health, age, size, and marital status.

        The above example is but one of countless others where a human is capable of discerning information that popular science believes to be impossible. If olfactory perception were based solely on the detection of physical molecules, then my perceptions would have been miraculously fantastic coincidences, but invalid. If olfactory perception were limited to the vibrations of physical molecules, then again my perceptions would be invalid, but physical molecules do not exist, the Universe is wave-based, and wheresoever there exists a wave there will also exist resonances of the wave. A molecule does not exist by itself; the molecule did not self-create itself, nor does the molecule’s wave structure end within the spatial location of the molecule, and to say otherwise would be a direct denial of physics and common sense.

        A male moth may smell a female from miles away, and though the moth may have the olfactory capacity to detect molecules at a close proximity, the moth may also have the olfactory potential of humans’ to sense the wave vibrations of molecules at great distances. The wave frequency of odorants is within a narrow range, and as the eyes can perceive waves at the speed of light, so might the olfactory perceive waves at a different range of frequencies. It is not a miracle to smell waves; it is merely being in the state of awareness and readiness to smell.

        It is an incorrect assumption to conclude that the ability to perceive a molecule must infer that the perception of molecules is the one and only possible means of olfactory perception. As with olfactory possessing two or more means of perception, so also are there manners of tactile perception which, not unsurprisingly, lend additional support for the concept of wave-reception at distances and through ‘solids.’ Within mainstream science, Turin’s theory is the better choice, for Turin’s theory allows the possibilities within physics, that of waves shaped by resonances, but Turin’s theory is not yet complete.

        At present there are two main facets of Reality that are still missing in physics. As a child I was informed that I was not qualified to speak on the topic, and since the declaration was never rescinded, today I continue holding to the behavior of keeping my mouth shut and of not speaking openly of what ought to be obvious. Someday physics will recognize the two missing elements, plus a relatively minor third, and when that day arrives, perhaps then will mainstream science allow for the possibility that humans are indeed wave-based creatures in a wave-based Reality.

Possible Explanations

        Hypothesis 1: Long distance olfactory perception is caused by molecules being raised up into the atmosphere and circulated back towards the ground upwind from the original source.
        Answer: On numerous occasions I questioned myself if such a circulation might have been the cause, but what about the occasions of smelling sausage cooking before the first puff of smoke exits a distant wood cook stove? There was not enough time for the molecules to exit the house, rise into the atmosphere, circulate upwind, and then fall back down to the ground.

        Hypothesis 2: The interpretation of the perception was an illusion that just happened to later be correct; a fantastic coincidence.
        Answer: I could accept one coincidence, maybe two, but not thousands spread out over a period of decades. Many individuals experience similar perceptions, and it is interesting to ponder how the distant perceptions occur.

        Hypothesis 3: If all olfactory perceptions were validated as accurate, then what about the John Wheeler concept of the past perceiving the future? Might there be some connection, that instead of actually detecting odorants of whatever form, there may instead be a sensing of an approaching future?
        Answer: All possibilities do remain open, but some distant perceptions are not verified at close proximity, but rather are used to direct the vision to observe and avoid contact with the odorant's source. The olfactory perception of a specific animal at a distance, an animal that is purposefully avoided, cannot be of a future olfactory perception if the close-range perception never occurs.

        Hypothesis 4: Synesthesia?
        Answer: No. Acute sensorial perception that correctly perceives a thing within its standard manner of cognition is not a disorder. Without first seeing, hearing, tasting, or touching an object, there can be no olfactory synesthesia. Though it has become a popular social fad to place labels of disorders on all above-average talents, the practise is improper and only leads to further restricting the study of olfactory perception.

        The bottom line is that regardless of what the final answer might someday be about olfactory perception, the answer will not be of a materialistic belief in sold matter.