Chapter 55 A blind man can feel an elephant

Dear Xiaowen: There are generally five senses (Most people speak of the five senses: sight—eye, vision. hearing—ear, hearing. smell—nose, smell. taste—tongue, taste. feeling—skin , touch), in fact there are not only five, there are eleven in humans. There is also a kind of "intuition" called "sixth sense" (sixth sense, an unusual power of perception; intuition; a power of perception beyond the five senses).Many people believe in the sixth, but it has no scientific basis.That is to say, the "sixth sense" has a superstitious flavor. Dad told you in his letter dated March 22 last year that the dragonfly has the best eyes, it can see a gnat eighteen feet away.In addition, the eagle (eagle) also has excellent eyes, and can see a small rabbit half a mile away. Chinese poets describe "the eagle's eyes are sick with grass", which is to praise its sharp eyesight.The eyesight of a small eagle is eight times better than that of humans, which shows that humans are really "short-sighted".Human beings not only cannot "bird's eye view" (a birds eye view) things, but also often refuse to "face" (face), and often "look but do not see" (see with ones own eyes) what he "witnessed" (see with ones own eyes), so It is often a "sloppy eye" (pretend not to see or to overlook).So people are often blind with their eyes open, especially when they are in love, because the great poet Chaucer said that love is blind.

A person who is blind in one eye is called a "one-eyed person". If the one-eyed person is lucky, he can also be a king, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king." (In the land of the blind, the one-eyed person It’s Wang.) This is a funny English proverb, and this is really the “special eye” in the Chinese proverb! (Eye for eye in English was probably invented by Cyclops. In Chinese, it means eye for eye, tit for tat, revenge, punch and kick.) If a person is completely blind in both eyes, as blind as a mole or as blind as a beetle, then he has to rely on "touching", which is another way of thinking. Kind of sense - "touch".

(For the situation of being fooled by vision, you can read the letter from your father on April 13th last year. Now I post an experiment on the phenomenon of "persistence of vision" for you. You can try it with your children immediately. It is very fun. ) Now let's talk about "haptics".Blind people have the best sense of touch. There is a joke in China that "blind people touch elephants". Because elephants are too big, blind people each touch merely a small part of the elephants body. As a result, the shape of the elephant that each person said is different.In fact, this is due to lack of time.Given enough time, the blind man will surely be able to take the shape of an elephant.

In the nineteenth century, a 15-year-old blind Frenchman, Louis Braille, invented a raised letter represented by small dots, which the blind man could touch, so his name Braille became a code. of small raised dots on paper (A blind person reads braille by running his fingers along on the dots. He can write braille on a 6-key machine called a braillewriter, or with a stylus on a pocketsize metal or plastic state.), so Blind people can "read" (touch) books. Helen Keller from the United States, she overcame the difficulties of being deaf, dumb, and blind. Her story is very moving. You can ask the teacher to tell you.Of course, the sense of touch is not limited to the hands, the skin has this feeling.The woodcock can place its beak on the ground and use its sense of touch to determine where the earthworms are moving in the ground. How amazing it is!How delicate is the sense of touch!Mimosa (sensitive plant) in plants also has this feeling, do you think it is strange?

The tongues of lizards (lizards, the gecko you see, called house lizare, a type of lizards) and snakes not only have a sense of touch, but also a sense of smell. Smell can be divided into two categories, smell and smell.There are a lot of words with fragrant in Chinese, such as fragrance, lady's chamber, sausage, muskmelon, banana, spices, scented tea, and dog meat), perfume (perfume, cologne water), sweet and nice-smelling, fragrant, crispy duck, sweet pastry, singing birds and flowers, national beauty... In addition to "Hong Kong-foot", All incense is good. There are also many stinky characters in Chinese, such as bedbug, notorious, smug, stinking ditch, stinking money, scold, a good beating, Skunk, stinking, bum, hussy, the human body, drink like a fish and eat like a pig, leave a name that stinks through the ages)...all stinks are bad except for "stinky tofu" (fermented bean curd).

The sense of smell will be tired, so when you first smell it, you will feel the most smelly or fragrant, but you will not feel it after smelling it for a long time. The Chinese idiom is "I don't smell the smell for a long time", and I have to be a "husband who chases the smell" because "the smell is similar" what! Compared with dogs, people's sense of smell is much worse, and dogs have the best noses.Some moths (moth) have their "nose" on the "antennae" (antennae, the antenna of the TV is also antennae), and they are also very sensitive.Female moths don't need to use perfume, male moths can smell it.

In terms of the fourth sense, the taste is also strange.Catfish have taste organs (organs) on their belly. If you put meat next to its belly, it will turn around and bite, which is much better than humans who only rely on their tongues. Generally speaking, there are five flavors, which are the "five flavors": sour (sour), sweet (sweet), bitter (bitter), spicy (hot), salty (salty), no taste, the Chinese idiom is "tastes like chewing wax" (tastes like chewing wax) candle).There is also a sentence called "uninteresting, tasteless". "Chicken ribs" (chickens ribs) means "it's a pity to discard, but tasteless to eat", which is a bit of a dilemma.

Some people's tongues are born with the ability to "taste", and such people can be tasters.Some people have a poor tongue, and they don't feel that there is anything serious about eating delicacies from mountains and seas. This is called "eating without knowing the taste". There are also many "tasteful" flavors, which you will gradually "smell", such as "delicious", "interesting", "interesting", "taste", "feeling", "charm", "playful", "The past can only be recollected"... If you read too many books, you will know everything.

The fifth sense is hearing. There is "pretend to be deaf and dumb" in Chinese, so sometimes people will deliberately "listen and not hear" (I hear, but I dont listen) to sounds, and sometimes people want to deliberately listen to what others say, so they plant "bug", it's not right, so Nixon stepped down.Therefore, the "smooth wind ear" hoped by the ancient Chinese must be limited in practice. Do you remember that little cricket in the movie? Cricket is only called by men (only the male cricket produces sound), women are much more silent than human women, they just listen.What do you use to listen to it?with ears.Where are the ears?On the front two legs!

What is even more strange is the little blind bat (bat). In English, it is said to be as blind as a bat (as blind as a bat), but the sound sense of bats is better than human radar (radar, ask the teacher what it is) , it uses sound waves to catch bugs and eat them, it doesn't need eyes at all! Sharks are also experts in hearing. They have "ears" all over their bodies (the Buddhist scriptures say that "the whole body is eyes", but it is "the whole body is a fight"). Even if it is 300 yards away (one yard is three feet, that is, foot), it will not "turn a deaf ear to", it will swim over immediately, ready to eat a big meal.

dad March 30, 1975