Book 09-07: A Natural History of the Senses

A book about the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. It may sound like it's a boring book but it is not. On the contrary, it was a very interesting read. Well, I do like science and watching Discovery Channel to begin with, so the topic of this book really falls within my area of interest.

It would be a tedious task to go over the book and list every bits and facts I've read about so I won't go there. Aside from the facts about our five sense, another bit I loved about this book is that etymology of certain words come up once in a while. As with the origin of the word pupil, the expanding and contracting opening in the iris of the eye, through which light passes to the retina. It came from the Latin pupilla, "a little doll." When the Romans looked into one another's eyes, they saw a doll-like reflection of themselves (A Natural History of the Senses, p232).

V. v. interesting, diba?

Next: Deciding between Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture and Jorge Ramos' El Regalo del Tiempo: Cartas a mis Hijos