That Smelly Feeling
Whitehead on the Sense of Smell
That Smelly Feeling
"The intellect fastens on smell as a datum: the animal experiences it as a qualification of his subjective feelings. Our developed consciousness fastens on the sensum as datum: our basic animal experience entertains it as a type of subjective feeling. The experience starts as that smelly feeling, and is developed by mentality into the feeling of that smell."
- AN Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
- AN Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Why a Dog Smells
“A dog smells in order to find out if the person in question is that It to which its affections cling. The room, or stable, may be full of odours, many of them for a dog sweeter. But he is not smelling for the pleasure of that smell, but to discover that It who claims his whole affection. An analogous substitute may deceive, but when discovered never does as well. The analogy may claim affection. But the original It commands a poignancy of feeling.”
- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Ceremonial Smells
“Music, ceremonial clothing, ceremonial smells, and ceremonial rhythmic visual appearances also have symbolic truth, or symbolic falsehood.”
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Generalized Aromas
"Generalized aromas take their place—the basic feelings of lifelong devotion, of lifelong repulsion, or of aesthetic excellence."
- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
An Olfactory Way of Knowing
- Smelling is a mode of experience in the mode of causal efficacy.
It is a way of being caused by the world, of feeling the presence of what is beyond us through its invisible traces. - Smelling is inherently emotional.
Each scent is clothed with feeling—curiosity, attraction, disgust, nostalgia, contentment. Smelling is not just sensing; it is feelingly knowing. - Smells can be symbolically true or symbolically false.
They can reveal or conceal the way the world is, evoking meanings that may or may not correspond to fact, yet still shaping our perception of reality. - It is more important that a smell be interesting than that it be true.
As Whitehead said of propositions, interest heightens intensity. Even symbolically false aromas may awaken life, memory, and imagination. - Smells can be ceremonial.
They ritually evoke sacred emotions—linking body and spirit, time and eternity, through the aroma of incense, oil, or earth. - Smells can be therapeutic.
They help relieve stress, anxiety, and fear, gently reorienting the psyche toward calm and wholeness. - Generalized aromas can pervade a life.
Just as landscapes shape our lives, so do scentscapes. We live and move not only in visible spaces but in olfactory atmospheres that hold memory and meaning. - The living Spirit of God, understood as love, can itself be conceived aromatically.
As the New Testament suggests, the Spirit has an “aroma of love”—a sacred fragrance that pervades the world, healing and transforming all that it touches.
Commentary
Jay McDaniel
Smelling as a Form of Feeling
Smelling is a form of prehending, of subjectively feeling something other than yourself. In human and animal life, it decidedly emotional, even if not connected the memories of the past. It brings with it emotions such as pleasure, disgust, curiosity, comfort, desire, attraction, aversion, and nostalgia. In the house of smelly feelings there are many rooms.
When my dog Emily smells the world, so Whitehead suggests, she does not begin with a conceptual prehension of the odor as a mere datum for intellectual apprehension. She begins with an immediate feeling clothed with what Whitehead calls a “subjective form” or emotion—be it curiosity, excitement, contentment, or caution. She is immersed in that smelly feeling. Sometimes she is smelling me, and it brings her pleasure. "It commands a poignancy of feeling." But sometimes she is smelling grass, typically with curiosity.
Even though the smell, whether of me or the grass, originates in another region of the space-time continuum (the extensive continuum), it becomes part of her in the moment at hand. It shapes her very way of being-in-the-world—or better, being-in-her-world. For Emily, the world is not a collection of detached, objective data; it is the world as felt, as interpreted through memory, bodily sensation, and emotional tone.
I suspect that she has an inner map of smells: a scentscape of remembered feelings, Because vision plays such a dominant role in human experience, we often speak of worldviews—maps drawn through sight and thought. But Emily maps her world through smells. Her world is a worldsmell—a landscape of olfactory feeling and significance. And who is to say that one sense is superior to another?
Generalized Aromas
Smelling is a form of prehending, of subjectively feeling something other than yourself. In human and animal life, it decidedly emotional, even if not connected the memories of the past. It brings with it emotions such as pleasure, disgust, curiosity, comfort, desire, attraction, aversion, and nostalgia. In the house of smelly feelings there are many rooms.
When my dog Emily smells the world, so Whitehead suggests, she does not begin with a conceptual prehension of the odor as a mere datum for intellectual apprehension. She begins with an immediate feeling clothed with what Whitehead calls a “subjective form” or emotion—be it curiosity, excitement, contentment, or caution. She is immersed in that smelly feeling. Sometimes she is smelling me, and it brings her pleasure. "It commands a poignancy of feeling." But sometimes she is smelling grass, typically with curiosity.
Even though the smell, whether of me or the grass, originates in another region of the space-time continuum (the extensive continuum), it becomes part of her in the moment at hand. It shapes her very way of being-in-the-world—or better, being-in-her-world. For Emily, the world is not a collection of detached, objective data; it is the world as felt, as interpreted through memory, bodily sensation, and emotional tone.
I suspect that she has an inner map of smells: a scentscape of remembered feelings, Because vision plays such a dominant role in human experience, we often speak of worldviews—maps drawn through sight and thought. But Emily maps her world through smells. Her world is a worldsmell—a landscape of olfactory feeling and significance. And who is to say that one sense is superior to another?
Generalized Aromas
Smell plays a less dominant role in human life. Still, it is noteworthy that, in the New Testament, even Christ is said to have an aroma—and a life-giving one at that, distinct from the odors of death.
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. (2 Corinthians, 2: 15-17)
It is likely that this reference to smell is metaphorical. those who insist that God is disembodied will quickly insist upon this, lest we think of God in overly physical terms. And yet Whitehead's proposal that smells begin as feelings, not as intellectual data, may be a cautionary note.
It may be a reminder that, after all, we do feel the presence of love in our lives in an intimate way that transcends sharp boundaries between objects and subjects; and that resembles a sense of small more than sight. The smell of love is perfume-like. It is not a sense-datum intellectually apprehended, but closer to an attractive feeling that is within the mind and heart, felt in the immediacy of loving relations. And a quick dismissal of smell as too physical for God may bespeak of dualism between spirit and matter that misses the mark of appreciating the intimate side of God amid, not apart from, relations with the world.
Smell the Grass
Recently, in light of political violence in the United States, the governor of Utah encouraged citizens of the US: "I would encourage people to log off. Turn off. Touch grass. Hug a family member. Go out and do good in your community.” It might also be good to smell grass, to reclaim the sensory side of life as a context for felt connections. It may be good, after all, to learn from Emily.
In Whitehead’s philosophy, human beings and other animals are not merely smellers. We are psychological and bodily organisms with our own first-person experience, whose lives consist of occasions of experience beginning at birth (and perhaps before) and continuing until death (and perhaps beyond). Our scentscapes are woven into our larger lifescapes—and our lifescapes have many dimensions: bodily, psychological, social, and spiritual.
Aromatherapy
In the course of our lifes, there are times when we humans turn to aromatherapy—not because smell alone can heal us, but because aromas can help evoke a sense of harmony and deepen the intensity of our participation in the whole of life. Here is how it is described by the Cleveland Institute:
Aromatherapy is a form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) that uses essential oils to help manage symptoms and enhance well-being. It is a holistic practice, supporting the whole self—mind, body, and spirit. Typically, it involves inhaling essential oils or applying them, in diluted form, to the skin. People around the world have practiced aromatherapy for centuries. In the United States, it often complements other treatments, especially for those coping with anxiety, depression, or stress. Many also use it simply to maintain balance and to feel more fully alive. (Click here for more.)
From a process perspective, aromatherapy can be understood as a way of inviting new feelings into our experience—feelings that restore harmony and deepen our sense of participation in the larger rhythms of life.
Smells True and False
As Whitehead reminds us, “Music, ceremonial clothing, ceremonial smells, and ceremonial rhythmic visual appearances also have symbolic truth, or symbolic falsehood.” (Adventures of Ideas). In this insight, he recognizes that meaning and truth are not confined to words or propositions. They are embodied and felt through the senses—through sound, texture, scent, and rhythm. Smells, like music or ritual movement, can participate in truth-telling when they evoke harmony, reverence, or right relationship with the world. They can also deceive, when they seduce us into false harmonies or superficial satisfactions.
Whitehead is famous for saying, in Process and Reality, that it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true, because what matters most is the evocation of heightened forms of intensity. The same might be said of smells. Even if not true to the situation, they can be true to the needs of life. It can sometimes be more important for smells to be interesting than for them to be accurate. A scent may be symbolically false—as when an artificial fragrance imitates the freshness of nature—but still meaningful in its capacity to soothe, to stir memory, or to invite a sense of vitality. Symbolic truth and symbolic falsehood, as Whitehead notes, both play roles in the adventure of experience. What matters is whether they deepen harmony and intensity—whether they help life feel more alive.