I found this book to be so interesting! I know it will be one that I find myself thinking about for a long time. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to read it.

--I had no idea my experience was so different from other people’s. Now I’m convinced that everybody has their own unique holographic experience of the sensory world.”--

--Synesthesia has been incorrectly defined, in my humble opinion, as “crossed wires in the brain” or “mixed-up senses.” In fact, synesthetes have the same primary response to a stimulus as neurotypical people do. If the numeral 5 appears in newsprint, I know that it is black on a white (well, somewhat beige) background. However, simultaneously, I see navy blue around that number and above that number it, like an aura. Therefore, I’ve created what I believe is a much better definition: Synesthesias are traits in which a sensory stimulus yields the expected sensory response plus one or more additional sensory responses.--

For myself, I have always been on the lower end of the taste/smell sensitivity bell curve, presuming there to be such a thing. I have always attributed this to the DNA luck of the draw. Some of it, though, might be a product of my homemaker mother’s abilities as a cook. There were a few things she made that were mouth-watering, but for the most part, it was said of Mom that she had a close relationship with Chef-Boyardee. Thus, it is no shock that my appreciation for cuisine exists in a narrow range. As smell is closely associated with taste, the two have traveled this low experiential road together. But maybe there is some hope for me and for folks with limitations like mine Maybe there are ways to expand the range of flavors and aromas we can detect and enjoy. (Make real friends with our taste buds?) That possibility is one of the points that Maureen Seaberg makes in her new book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. There are several others.

Seaberg is a synesthete, gifted with abilities beyond the average. Even within that, she is a tetrachromat, proud possessor of four sets of visual cones to our usual kit of three. She has used this extra-sightedness to help a cosmetics firm produce more pleasing hues. She is also a mirror-touch synesthete, which means that she can feel your pain, really.

--Patricia Lynne Duffy, a member of the United Nations Staff 1 Percent for Development Fund committee, was safely ensconced in her Manhattan office, but when she read the proposals before her, she felt the pain of the world’s most fragile people.--

She is the author of multiple books on her personal experience as a sensory anomaly, and others looking into the science of what makes us different. Among these are Tasting the Universe, Struck by Genius, and The Synesthesia Experience.

While highlighting the differences in human capacity, Seaberg argues that we are all potentially synesthetes, but that our acculturation has defined limits to what our senses regard as the human range. She says we are capable of much more, and cites sundry studies to show our surprising range. One shows that we can detect light down to a single photon.

Is it that we are all, or most of us, or many of us, capable of experiencing, sensing much more of our world that we have to date? Are these tools in our toolbox that we have merely never been trained to use? Seaberg uses the examples of many people who are either synesthetes, or who have naturally enhanced capabilities to argue that we could be experiencing much, much more than we do. She also notes people who, through traumatic events, (a mugging in one case) have subsequently displayed enhanced capacities, supporting the notion that we all may have considerable untapped potential. One surprising element here is her reporting on the benefits of the Montessori teaching method, which encourages multi-sensate learning.

She suggests we incorporate into our psychological and medical frameworks the notion of a Perception Quotient, or PQ. Just as we have for our rational processing with the intelligence Quotient, or IQ, and EQ for Emotional abilities.

Seaberg spends some time with the question of transhumanism, the notion that people can evolve beyond our current biological constraints by incorporating connections (merging?) with technology. She argues against such, contending that our realized and latent capacities can take us a lot further than we have gone, without the need for electronic enhancement.

--There’s plenty of evidence that humans are adapting to, even passing, machines by using their senses. Just look at the mind-meld young people have with their personal devices and the manual deftness with which they use them compared to older generations. Maybe the singularity moves in two directions, and we meet somewhere along the way. There’s a human-based component not yet considered. And since we’ve recently learned that human sensory potentials are far greater than we knew, perhaps we have a little more time to think about the value of being Homo sapiens.--

In a related vein, she notes that there are mirror-touch synesthetes who blur those lines.

--A very small subset of the neurological outliers known as mirror-touch synesthetes have extreme empathy for machines. They are sometimes able to feel the mechanisms in their own sensitive bodies. I call them machine synesthetes or machine empaths.--

She touches on some even more esoteric subjects, like the remote viewing program sponsored by the USA military from the 1970s into the 1990s, and the possibility of consciousness permeating more of our biosphere than we may have realized.

If you are looking for a how-to re expanding your sensate horizons I would look elsewhere. The prompts offered for that here are introductory at best. Seaberg does offer some other places to go for that. This is more a treatise on the possibility of capacity expansion, not a manual for expanding ourselves.

If we are indeed the architects of our own reality, it is clear that some of us have been gifted with a superior toolkit for interpreting what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, in that construction process. Maybe for the rest of us there are some tools in the basement or shed that have been gathering dust all our lives, tools that can be cleaned off, greased up, and maybe even powered up. It may or may not be a widespread opportunity, but it is certainly a hopeful and very interesting one. In trying to make sense of senses, Maureen Seaberg has written a fascinating, accessible work on human possibility that should stimulate your curiosity, whether or not you experience collateral sounds, colors, scents or other incomings. Checking this book out would definitely be sensible.

--“We genuinely experience scent as the emotion we have attached to it,” one sensory educator said. “Our hearts lift at the aroma that reminds us of a happy day at the beach, or our hearts break a little when we smell the aroma of a long-dead relative’s soap.”--

Review posted – 10/20/23

Publication date – 8/8/23

I received an ARE of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

A very fascinating, interesting, scientific book about our senses. It really makes you think about the deeper meaning of our senses and how we are in the world. Definitely a different take on our senses.

Thank you for the ARC. #FearfullyAndWonderfullyMade #NetGalley # St.MartinsPress

Readers are introduced to the five senses in the human body: smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing. This isn’t your typical science book; we’re introduced to a slew of super-smellers who can detect diseases, and Covid by simply smelling an individual’s clothing.

We’re taken back in time, reflecting on the writings from Galileo Galilei, learning about how the universe wouldn’t exist without our senses understanding the world around us.

I learned more from this book than I have in any science class that I took over the years. I probably didn’t pay much attention when I was younger, but now I understand how sensational our bodies are and how much people are dependent on technology instead of experiencing and experimenting with their senses.

This book takes the saying “you learn something new everyday” to a whole new ballpark. The science behind our senses is astonishing, the super-humans with their heightened senses are saving lives, and scientists are conducting experiments to better understand our bodies and fully expand our senses.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Maureen Seaberg was a really interesting story and easy to read.
A wonderfully written nonfiction/science read. I thought the writing was done very well.
Maureen kept my attention throughout. I thought this was very informative.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

We've been taught that our senses pale in comparison to those of other animals. As this book shows, that belief is nonsense. Humans can detect a trillion scents and perceive the light of a single photon. This fascinating, entertaining, and easy-to-read book relates the latest in the science of human sensory perception. Our ability to experience and enjoy the world is deeper than we imagine, if only we pay more attention.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

A bit of a tough call because one must be open to what might be termed the woo-woo in addition to the science of the senses. Seaberg does a good job profiling those with super talents- such as a woman who could smell Parkinsons, a sommelier, and the always fascinating synesthesia. And then there are those who claim they can sense things on the other side of the world and so on. I wish she'd stuck to the legit rather than moved to the dubious but I appreciate her sincerity. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC,

This is a book that will work for some and probably not-so-much for others. While I found it quite interesting to read various stories documenting individuals with keen senses, I had to question some of the thoughts. Not as a scientist, but as a book-reading Christian.

I loved reading about Joy Milne, a woman who could early Parkinson’s disease by the smell of individuals or their clothing, which led to the development of an early diagnostic test. Learning about those who could taste more acutely, or visualize colors with letters, etc. always has a way of fascinating me.

But, in the case of this book, these stories were not for entertainment purposes, but more to point out what humans are capable of. And with practice and training, we all have the potential for these abilities.

As the book progressed, my unscientific doubts began to wave a few red flags of disbelief. The book was losing some credibility.

While parts of the book were definitely interesting, as a whole it just didn’t work for me. Though it is very thought-provoking.

This wasn’t entirely what I was expecting. When I started it, I thought I was reading a science-based book about how our senses work, and how they’re sharper than we realize. But then, it suddenly started going on about “vibrations,” which felt odd. Then it turned into a personal account of the author’s tetrachromacy and synesthesia, with some commentary that almost felt like eugenics, as if people with super-senses are superior to everyone else. And then it dived sideways into Buddhism, tantra, and meditation, and even started going on about secret government remote sensing programs. As a result, the book felt disjointed and unstructured, trying to cover too much ground and too many disparate perspectives.

The thing is, the fundamental premise of the book is interesting and important.

The prevalent belief is that human senses are pretty mediocre, at least in comparison with many animals. Seaberg argues that they’re actually pretty sharp - we can detect single photons, for example - but that most of us are operating at a very low level of awareness. This is caused partly by our indoor lifestyle, which means we don’t have to be aware of our surroundings, and our lack of training. Hunter-gatherers, nomads, and soldiers generally have much sharper senses than the rest of us, because they are essential survival skills. If we choose to, we can make ourselves much more alert and sensitive. Seaberg closes the book with a simple, but effective ten-step methodology for sharpening our senses.

If the book had focused simply on that aspect, it would have been excellent. However, the rest of the material diluted the message, and would, I think, have been better as a separate book.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

***I received an E-ARC, ahead of release, through the St. Martin's Press influencer program. ***

I had no idea the range of our senses! Growing up we're all taught that, although we're intelligent compared to every other species, our senses are no match for the creatures in the world around us...but we're capable of so much more!

This book teaches us so much about our senses and the things we're capable of, like a woman who can actually tell when you're sick just by your scent!