Table Of ContentHuman Perspectives in Health Sciences and Technology
Series Editor: Marta Bertolaso
Nicola Di Stefano
Maria Teresa Russo Editors
Olfaction: An
Interdisciplinary
Perspective
from Philosophy
to Life Sciences
Human Perspectives in Health Sciences
and Technology
Volume 4
Series Editor
Marta Bertolaso, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy
The Human Perspectives in Health Sciences and Technology series publishes
volumes that delve into the coevolution between technology, life sciences, and
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More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/16128
Nicola Di Stefano • Maria Teresa Russo
Editors
Olfaction: An
Interdisciplinary
Perspective from
Philosophy to Life
Sciences
Editors
Nicola Di Stefano Maria Teresa Russo
Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Department of Education Science
Technology (ISTC) Roma Tre University
Italian National Research Council (CNR) Via del Castro Pretorio, Roma, Italy
Rome, Italy
ISSN 2661-8915 ISSN 2661-8923 (electronic)
Human Perspectives in Health Sciences and Technology
ISBN 978-3-030-75204-0 ISBN 978-3-030-75205-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75205-7
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Foreword
Smell is unique among the human senses. An extension of the nervous system is
dipped into the airy chemical soup surrounding our bodies, and that contact evokes
a mélange of intertwined perception, emotion, and memory. The sense of smell is
highly individualized – small differences in genetic codes and large differences in
personal experience cause each of us to experience an aroma somewhat differ-
ently, yet we have developed few words that can clearly describe a smell to some-
one else. Smell is deeply consequential for the human experience. In the kitchen
it alerts us to spoilage while giving our food flavor and our mind pleasure. In
social environments it influences our attractions and interactions. When smell is
lost, depression and anxiety often follow. The story of smell thus spans from the
biochemistry of an odorant molecule binding to an odor receptor through to a
brain interpreting its olfactory inputs in full light of the accumulated knowledge
of the world it inhabits. Smell provides a broad window through which to view the
human mind.
Exploring such a complex sense requires creative and humane acts of schol-
arship. This volume, lovingly assembled by Nicola Di Stefano and Maria Teresa
Russo, collects olfactory insights from philosophical, aesthetic, psychological,
anthropological, and neurobiological perspectives. One emergent theme might
be the idea of smell as a physical projection of self into a literal aura, a means
of both unconscious self-expression and the basis of an olfactory communion
between disparate individuals. Such a sense can have value, beauty, and of
course congruency or conflict with other persons, musics, and objects of desire
in the world. Another theme is that loss of smell can be a harbinger of disease,
most saliently COVID-19 (the illness that currently disrupts much of the world)
but also neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, while
olfactory stimuli can themselves be clues to other health problems. In seeking
the biological underpinnings of smell we may thus not merely illuminate the
mechanisms of the olfactory experience but also find clues to improving the
well-being of the person.
The editors have assembled a cast of forward thinkers with disparate perspec-
tives on smell. The authors hail from across Western Europe, the United States,
and India and have delivered chapters with academic styles varying from the care-
ful claims of the biologist to the poetic prose of the artist and everything in
v
vi Foreword
between. This juxtaposition of topics and scholarly approaches has produced a
unique and stimulating volume that will be of interest to smell aficionados
everywhere.
Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science John P. McGann
Rutgers University
Piscataway, NJ, USA
May, 2021
Preface
When nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of
things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful,
smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the
ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the
immense edifice of memory Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way.
This volume was originally conceived after a national workshop on olfaction
held at Campus Bio-Medico University (Rome, Italy) in May 2017. On that occa-
sion, Italian philosophers, psychologists, physiologists, ethologists, and bioengi-
neers were invited to discuss the relevance of olfaction in their own fields of research.
This interdisciplinary panel was so inspiring that it suggested to us to turn it into a
published volume. About a year later, our book proposal, enriched with the partici-
pation of international scholars, was accepted for publication in the Springer series
Human Perspectives in Health Sciences and Technology, recently launched by
Marta Bertolaso.
Two general ideas are at the basis of this book. First, the theoretical claim that all
senses are different and one at the same time. Although we distinguish among five
(or more) senses, sensory perception might be more adequately conceived of as a
unitary process for making sense of the external world. Therefore, even focusing on
a single, allegedly “minor” sense, such as olfaction, might unveil a wide variety of
experiences ranging from anthropology to aesthetics that deeply characterize and
are encoded in our form of life. Second, the methodological claim that, in order to
provide a non-reductionist account of the complexity of olfactory experiences, an
interdisciplinary approach is preferable.
Grounded on these premises, this volume aims to offer an overview of the role of
olfaction in human life by taking into consideration different perspectives, from
philosophy to psychology, from sociology to bioengineering. Contributions are
organized into four sections. Part 1 gathers studies from the fields of anthropology
and social sciences showing how olfaction shapes culture (Le Breton), from societ-
ies (Kapoor) to individuals (Cilli & Gruppioni). In Part 2, olfaction is conceived of
as a window on the self (Diaconu; Griffero) and as a means to embody moral and
aesthetic values (Jaquet). Part 3 considers olfactory perception within the general
frame of human sensory experiences. Traditional topics such as the psychology of
the appreciation of olfactory beauty (Diessner) and the role of olfaction in the
vii
viii Preface
appreciation of food (Cavalieri) are considered, as well as more recently debated
topics in multisensory research, i.e., the crossmodal associations between odour and
sound in poetry and music (Di Stefano et al.). Part 3 also presents an overview of a
major issue in olfaction and cognition research, i.e., the role of language in shaping
our olfactory world (Dubois). Finally, Part 4 deals with the role of the human olfac-
tory system in health and disease (Herz) and explores the frontiers of the use of
artificial olfaction in biomedical contexts (Santonico et al.). Taken together, these
contributions provide a colourful depiction of olfaction, from which it emerges
clearly how invisible, vocabulary-poor chemical substances so effectively affect our
social and personal identity, shape cultures of the world and convey moral and aes-
thetic values.
We would like to thank Marta Bertolaso, editor of the series, for her invaluable
support during the review process of the proposal. We are also especially grateful to
those speakers from the Rome workshop who contributed to this volume and to the
scholars from around the world who accepted to join our project, providing it with
an international dimension and making it relevant to a wider scientific community.
Rome, Italy Nicola Di Stefano
Rome, Italy Maria Teresa Russo
Contents
Part I Olfaction, Social, and Cultural Identity
Smell as a Way of Thinking About the World: An Anthropology . . . . . . . . . 3
David Le Breton
The Smells of Caste – Body, Self and Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Shivani Kapoor
Not Only Olfaction: The Nose, Protagonist of the Diversity
and Individuality of the Human Face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Elisabetta Cilli and Giorgio Gruppioni
Part II S melling Beings. Philosophy and Phenomenology of Olfaction
Being and Making the Olfactory Self.
Lessons from Contemporary Artistic Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Madalina Diaconu
Sniffing Atmospheres. Observations on Olfactory
Being-In-The-World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Tonino Griffero
Smell as a Carrier of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Chantal Jaquet
Part III O lfactory Perception, Aesthetic Experience, and Language
What a Good Nose Knows. The Role of Smell
in the Appreciation of Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Rosalia Cavalieri
Towards a Situated Cognitive Approach
of Olfactory experiences and Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Danièle Dubois
ix
