The essence of the human condition?

‘I see what you mean.’ ‘I hear what you are saying.’ ‘I smell what you... smell?’. The first two sentences involve the sense of vision and audition and contain as the subject something typical of higher-order functioning: meaning and language. The fact these sentences do not work with smell is significant in showing the low regard of the chemical senses. And yet, after reviewing the possible reasons for this position, this article will demonstrate the importance of smell to memory, eating behaviour, and changes across the lifespan; and finally its uneasy relation to art. Paradoxically, by reflection, there is reason to believe in the very humanising properties of this sense