Keywords In and Out of Context

I didn’t include the human sense of smell in my list of key sensory capabilities in Chapter 1 of my book, because:

1. I was a victim of the common misconception, apparently first promulgated by French physician Pierre Paul Broca in the 19th century, that our olfactory bulbs are inferior to those of other mammals (see John McGann’s excellent 2017 explanation in Science of the history behind this long-standing error).

2. I was unaware of Lucia Jacob’s PROUST hypothesis, concerning “olfactory cognition,” that is, the important role that olfaction may play in embodied cognition.

3. I noted that anything about the human sense of smell (or about smells is general) in LIS literature seems to be confined to the smell of books, though the neologism “bibliosma” (the nostalgic smell of print books) doesn’t seem to appear in the dictionary (at least not yet). However, the archival profession is clearly taking more of an interest, as shown by Bembibre and Strlič ‘s “Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours,” with its fascinating “Historic Book Odour Wheel,” although even these authors begin their article with the observation that “Our knowledge of the past is odourless.”

Since Broca’s area in the brain is all about language production and comprehension, though, it probably isn’t surprising that he gave smell pretty short shrift. It is surprising that we still do, despite the fact that “anosmia” (the loss of one’s sense of smell and the accompanying loss of the ability to taste) is known to be a result of many illnesses, notably Covid-19.