6th Sense

I’ve often wondered about the whole notion of the 6th sense, because so many things seem to get caught up in the one concept. The other 5 senses, of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch are quite specific about what they are covering. The so called 6th sense, however, not only helps people to read minds, contact the dead and see auras, but also to predict the future.

Now I know there is much that is unexplained in the world, for example the collective consciousness of some groups of animals which mean that certain shoals of fish, or flocks of birds seem to move as a single entity. Absolutely fascinating, and as yet, totally unexplained.

But just because there are some unexplained phenomena about doesn’t mean that we can leap to a whole pile of spurious conclusions.

The best analogy I can come up with is to imagine a world where there is no sense of smell. In such a place, it would not have been necessary for the language to have developed to explain the variety of aromas, as no one would be experiencing them.

Let us suppose, in this olfactory deprived world, that a few people had, by bizarre evolutionary flukes perhaps, actually developed a sense of smell. You can imagine how a conversation might go:

“You want to know something strange? When I wake up in the morning, I can tell if someone has put the coffee on and is frying bacon, before I even get up out of bed.”

“I don’t understand it. Do you think it’s related to your uncanny ability to know when little Abbey’s nappy needs changing without even looking?”

“Maybe, maybe. Sometimes, I just fear I might be going mad.”

“Are you kidding? I’d love to have your powers. Now, before you go to a priest for an exorcism, I want you to tell me what lottery numbers are going to come up this weekend…”