Why Do they say that we have 5 senses? I can think of at least 7!?

Question

Surely the sense of balance and the sense of hot/cold are valid senses. Why aren't they included?

Ok, I now accept that sence of temperature may come under the sense of touch, although, I do not actually have to physically touch something to know that I feel hot or I feel cold.

But I am still think that the sense of balance is a true sense as there is a specific organ within the ear that senses the physical state of balance.

So now we may have to rename films such as the sixth sense to the seventh sense!

- We have now also concluded that your muscles are sensory organs, as the sense of weight (i.e. how heavy something is when you lift it) is done through your muscles and joints rather than just the touch of skin.

Answer 1

Hot and cold is a sense of touch. But you're right there are 6, These senses are described in the dictionar as:::

1.
1. Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body are received and felt, as the faculties of hearing, sight, smell, touch, taste, and equilibrium.
2. A perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation: a sense of fatigue and hunger.

2. senses The faculties of sensation as means of providing physical gratification and pleasure.

3.
1. An intuitive or acquired perception or ability to estimate: a sense of diplomatic timing.
2. A capacity to appreciate or understand: a keen sense of humor.
3. A vague feeling or presentiment: a sense of impending doom.
4. Recognition or perception either through the senses or through the intellect; consciousness: has no sense of shame.

4.
1. Natural understanding or intelligence, especially in practical matters: The boy had sense and knew just what to do when he got lost.
2. The normal ability to think or reason soundly. Often used in the plural: Have you taken leave of your senses?
3. Something sound or reasonable: There's no sense in waiting three hours.

5.
1. A meaning that is conveyed, as in speech or writing; signification: The sense of the novel is the inevitability of human tragedy.
2. One of the meanings of a word or phrase: The word set has many senses. See Synonyms at meaning.

6.
1. Judgment; consensus: sounding out the sense of the electorate on capital punishment.
2. Intellectual interpretation, as of the significance of an event or the conclusions reached by a group: I came away from the meeting with the sense that we had resolved all outstanding issues.

Answer 2

Its rubbish. You are quite right. What we were all taught in school is wrong. There are way more than 5 senses. Some others:

- Sense of how heavy something is (determined by your joints when you pick somethin up)
- Senses of hunger & thirst
- Sense of orientation (which way up you are)
- Sense of body position i.e. where all your limbs are, whether you are sitting, standing or lying down.
- Others have already mentioned hot and cold, but your body can sense its temperature and attempts to adjust itself to keep the temperature optimal. This is different from being able to sense whether something is hot or cold to the touch
- Sense of when the baby is ready to be born if you are pregnant
(the body knows when to go into labour)
- Sense when your bladder is full
+ loads of others

The body has all sorts of internal sensors that control its inner workings too: i.e. sense of when the salt level in your blood is too high, so adds more water to dilute, sense of when to release insulin and so on for all bodily processes.

Answer 3

I agree that the "five senses" term goes with the five sense organs:Eyes, ears, nose, taste,skin (touch).
We don't directly perceive our balance organs, so they weren't recognized as such.

Biologically speaking, I agree that hot/ cold are probably different receptors than other touch receptors. But to be consistent, shouldn't we bust up taste: sweet, salt, bitter, sour. Sight: rods, cones. and so on.

And who knows how long it would take to filter into elementary biology classes, and for parents to pick it up. And then only after the biologists have wrestled over it.

So I guess we'll just be stuck with five senses. Besides it is easy for kindergartners to understand. We don't throw all the numbers (Negatives, irrationals) at them all at once, so why confuse them with a bunch more senses?

Besides, it matches the number of fingers, so it's easy to remember, and where would we put ESP?

Answer 4

First you have to understand the meaning of sense
sense is the sensation provided by sense organs and sense organ is:
Any organ that an animal uses to gain information about its surroundings

So in my openion hot/cold are sense and balance can also be a sence
but what we mean by we have 5 senses is that we have 5 sense organs i.e.
eyes,ears ,nose,tongue & skin

Answer 5

Hot and cold kind of fall into the touch category, or just as the normal temparature balances of a living creature.

Sense of balance is a little different as well, and isn't really a "sense" in the same, well, sense as the others are.

Answer 6

Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch, Taste...

The touchy-feeley stuff comes under touch. ESP, unproven as it is, is considered to be a sixth sense.

Balance actually comes under hearing as it comes from your auditory canals. As it is from here, and not reliant on hearing ability, it explains why deaf people have balance too.

Admittedly, the five categories are very broad but they are like that so you can remember them all. I suppose now that a lot more people have a good education (and can henceforth understand Monty Python and the Goons), the categories need to be broken down. Perhaps they were formed in days when scientists thought serpents lived in a woman's womb.

Answer 7

OK smarty, the sense of heat/cold comes under sense of touch as it covers a physical feeling, other than that the rest can be categorised under sense of sight, sound, smell and taste. Other senses that you may think of are essentially sensations of emotions literally or figuratively like the sense of humour or sense of trepidation with which I'm waiting to see your response!!

Answer 8

I agree with you. But not all people have all these senses.

I can not find any logical explanation for some impressions sometimes, but they prove to be right later, even if I would not like it be the true. I think we are not taught well to take into account features of people as whole complex, their combinations, but our brain processes their compatibility and gives a signal. Only this signal is not always expressed in logic terms, so we react as emotional beings to them or oppress our emotions playing reasonable and sociable people.

Answer 9

5 senses are points of perception or channels from where we percive singals outside our body
1. Eyes-we can see
2. Ears -we can hear
3. Nose -we can smell
4. Tounge-we can taste
5. Skin-we can feel the touch
hot and cold are felling not senses

from these five senses we learn about the world

Answer 10

I thought it was 6. I've heard of having a sixth sense but not 7. But hey who knows!