bordarretazos

«We assume that our familiar senses give us a complete picture of our environment, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are stone-deaf and colour blind in a universe of impressions beyond the range of our senses. The world of a dog is a world of scent; that of a dolphin, a symphony of ultrasonic pulses as meaningful as sight. To the bee, on a cloudy day, the diffuse sunlight carries a direction-sign utterly beyond our powers of discrimination, for it can detect the plane vibration of the light-waves. The rattlesnake strikes in total darkness towards the infra-red glow of its living prey – as our guided missiles have learned to do, only in the last few years. There are blind fish in muddy rivers who probe their opaque universe with electric fields, the natural prototype of radar; and all fish have a curious organ, the lateral line, running along their bodies to detect vibrations and pressure changes in the water around them.

Could we interpret such sense impressions, even if they were fed into our brains? Could we interpret such sense impressions, even if they were fed into our brains? Undoubtedly yes, but only after a great deal of training. We have to learn to use all our own senses; a new-born baby cannot see, nor can a man whose sight is suddenly restored to him – though the visual mechanism in both cases may be functioning perfectly. The mind behind the brain must first analyse and classify the impulses reaching it, comparing them with other information from the external world – until it all builds up to a consistent picture. Not until then do we ‘see’; such integration should also be possible with other sense organs, though we will have to invent new verbs for the experience.

The pilot of an aircraft, gathering data from his scores of dials and gauges, is performing a similar feat. He identifies himself with his vehicle, intellectually and perhaps even emotionally. One day, through telemetering devices, we may be able to do the same with an animal. At last we will know the way of an eagle in the sky, of a whale in the sea, or a tiger in the jungle. And so we will regain our kinship with the animal world, the loss of which is one of modern man’s most grievous deprivations.»

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Arthur C. Clarke