Why is hearing called a sense?

Question

All hearing is is super-sensitive feeling. I mean, think about it: hearing is the reception of vibrations, but that is what feeling is as well.

What I mean is, shouldn't it be condensed down to 4 senses instead of five?

You can feel bass vibrations, so you CAN FEEL SOUND!

Look, if you don't have something helpful to contribute, like the second answer, don't say anything, as I choose best answer.

Final note: Before I log off, I just want to specify, why is hearing afforded the privellege of being called a "main sense" when other senses like balance, are just as important. It just seems like sound is like a sub category of touch OK? This is a popular topic.

Answer 1

So the fact the tiniest bones and an ear drum can take in those vibrations, distinguish the smallest differences so a violinist and other musicians can distinguish between music notes does not impress you. Tell that to the blind.

It is a sense because it is one of the five ways our bodies can help our brain interpret the environment around us.

Vertigo is feeling of imbalance. The ear is the main organ in charge of balance.

Answer 2

In humans and other mammals, hair cell bundles are arranged in four long, parallel columns on a gauzy strip of tissue called the basilar membrane. This membrane, just over an inch long, coils within the cochlea, a bony, snail-shaped structure about the size of a pea that is located deep inside the inner ear.

Sound waves generated by mechanical forces, such as a bow being drawn across a string, water splashing on a hard surface, or air being expelled across the larynx, cause the eardrum—and, in turn, the three tiny bones of the middle ear—to vibrate. The last of these three bones (the stapes, or "stirrup") jiggles a flexible layer of tissue at the base of the cochlea. This pressure sends waves rippling along the basilar membrane, stimulating some of its hair cells.

These cells then send out a rapid-fire code of electrical signals about the frequency, intensity, and duration of a sound. The messages travel through auditory nerve fibers that run from the base of the hair cells to the center of the cochlea, and from there to the brain. After several relays within the brain, the messages finally reach the auditory areas of the cerebral cortex, which process and interpret these signals.

The definition of sense is a perception or feeling produced by a stimulus; sensation.

Well you can feel sound, but you can't actually touch it, hence why it can't go under touch. You also cannot see sound or taste it either. Hence it HAS to have it's own category within out senses.

Answer 3

In evolutionary terms, touch and hearing are closely related. Like the sense of touch, audition requires sensitivity to the movement of molecules in the world outside the organism. Both hearing and touch are types of mechanosensation. However, they differ in two important ways:
1) Audition (hearing) can only sense vibration frequency, not pressure. For example, when you press your hand on something you can tell how hard you are pressing. You can not detect slow changes in air pressure through your sense of hearing.
2) The are processed by different portions of your brain so even though you might feel a vibration on your skin, your brain will process the way you hear and fell the vibration separately.

Answer 4

Sensing something means perceiving it, being aware of its existence. All the five generally accepted human senses operate in different ways. You could just as easily say that hearing isn't a sense because it doesn't involve the dissolving of particles in the nasal membranes which triggers the perception of smell.

Hearing is the sense of being aware of sound waves reaching the sensory organs. The vibrations of the sensory receptor (e.g. the ear drum) are transmitted to nerves which send nerve impulses to the brain to be interpreted as sounds.

Feeling - i.e. the sense of TOUCH is *not necessarily* the reception of vibrations (although as you point out, it can be at some frequencies and strengths). The sensation of touch is triggered through various types of nerve receptors, usually embedded in the skin. For example there are heat receptors and pressure receptors, neither of which respond to vibrations. If we relied on our sense of "touch" to feel sounds then it would be hardly any sense at all and we would be deaf.

Answer 5

To an extent you have a point. A strong enough sound can be felt by your body. I will suggest that you research about the differences between nerve endings that sense touch and the fine little hairs in your ear that sense sound. GLH answered pretty much the way it works.

Fort those people with negative willed answers:

Leave the guy alone. It is just a question which happens to make some sense.

Answer 6

feeling is also reception of vibrations, true. (and a good point you have.) but the vibrations that comes from an oven is not given a special meaning. The oven can't change its vibrations due to its feeling. But we -the living- give our oral vibrations "meanings". the process of translating the meaningful vibrations is different than feeling. Also feeling consists of pressure and friction.

Answer 7

Interesting concept...
We have an organ specially designed to detect sound waves
so we gave its function a name and call it a sense...
Balance is contained within the ear structure so it is not
called an independent sense..

Answer 8

why does 2 + 2 = 4 come on are you really asking that

Answer 9

Because you perceive sounds with your hearing the same as you perceive sight with your vision.

Answer 10

Seems like you've answered your own question; I have nothing further to add.