Why isn’t the sense of balance included along with sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch?
Because it isn’t really a sense?
Union regulations.
Balance arguably falls under the proprioception umbrella, and proprioception is very reasonable to consider a 6th sense.
Ultrafilter nailed it. This sense is one frequently damaged in the progression of diabetes. It leads to unsteady gait, frequent falls, and extra wear and tear on joints.
Sacks has a very interesting case history of a woman who suddenly lost all proprioception in The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat: She was unable to feel where her body was anymore; indeed, she lost much of her sense of self due to her condition, and felt profoundly disembodied. Even her vocal posture was gone: She went from a near-mute whisper to a ‘stagey’, ‘theatrical’ voice simply because she no longer had a good idea of where her vocal machinery was on a purely unconscious level.
Eventually, she regained (limited) function by replacing fully unconscious propriception with near-unconscuous visual cues: Her eyes did the job the internal proprioception nerves do in normal people.
Because those are purely receptive senses. While balance involves some perception, it also has a response/action component.
Explain?
BBC quiz show QI mentioned over 10. Sensing heat, pain, balance…
M. Night Shyamalan owns it now.
Of course the 6th sense is included in discussions along with sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch? Everypone knows sharks have the ability to sense electric fields, in addition to all those other senses.
Oh, did you mean people?
What we usually consider the single “sense of touch” is actually itself five different senses, for heat, cold, touch, pressure, and pain. Plus there’s the afore-mentioned propioception, which tells you things like whether your elbow is bent, and you could arguably consider the inner ear’s sense of acceleration (also important in balance) as separate from proprioception. Then there are various senses for the body’s internal state, telling you, for instance, when you’re tired, or when you’ve held your breath too long.
cabdude, I think what Gary T meant by balance being responsive, is that just sensing isn’t enough. It’s one thing to notice “Hey, I’m tilting over to the left too far; I’m about to fall”, and another to tilt back to the right so one doesn’t fall.
I blame Bush.
Sense of humor is real. May not be reliable, but neither is smell.
Because you really can’t, well, sense anything from balance? If you have a person in front of you, you can see and hear that person. You can probably smell him if you get close enough, and if he (or she) lets you, you can even taste and feel that person.
What does balance do? Nothing.
How about embarrassment?
Or a sense of humour?
Well, it tells you exactly where the center of the nearest largest mass is. That’s pretty special, really.
(The center of gravity of the Earth, for those of you wondering. AKA “Down”.)
Is there a qualitative difference between touch and pressure?
Also, couldn’t pain be defined more simply as “too much heat/cold/pressure”?