Friday, August 17, 2007

No wonder it's so hard to build a robot

In a review of Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie, Daniel B. Smith writes,
Scientists now agree that the classical five senses are not the only avenues through which we gather information about the world around and, equally important, inside us. Aristotle failed to specify proprioception (the sense of how our body parts are positioned in space relative to one another), equilibrioception (the sense of linear acceleration and head position), thermoception (the sense of heat and cold) and nociception (the sense of pain). Some scientists include hunger and thirst on the list of senses, so that the matter of how many we have, while undoubtedly more than Aristotle suggested, remains unclear.
McCredie wants to add balance to this list.

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