Editing Sensorium (section)

== Ratios of sensation ==
In the 20th century, the sensorium became a key part of the theories of [[Marshall McLuhan]], [[Edmund Snow Carpenter|Edmund Carpenter]] and [[Walter J. Ong]] (Carpenter and McLuhan 1960; Ong 1991).

McLuhan, like his mentor [[Harold Innis]], believed that media were biased according to [[Harold Innis's communications theories|time and space]]. He paid particular attention to what he called the sensorium, or the ''effects'' of media on our senses, positing that media affect us by manipulating the ratio of our senses. For example, the [[alphabet]] stresses the sense of sight, which in turn causes us to think in linear, objective terms. The medium of the alphabet thus has the effect of reshaping the way in which we, collectively and individually, perceive and understand our environment in what has been termed the [[Alphabet Effect]].<ref>[http://www.collectionscanada.ca/innis-mcluhan/002033-2010-e.html Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071001082647/http://www.collectionscanada.ca/innis-mcluhan/002033-2010-e.html |date=2007-10-01 }}, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada</ref>

Focusing on variations in the sensorium across social contexts, these theorists collectively suggest that the world is explained and experienced differently depending on the specific "ratios of sense" that members of a [[culture]] share in the sensoria they learn to inhabit (Howes 1991, p.&nbsp;8). More recent work has demonstrated that individuals may include in their unique sensoria perceptual proclivities that exceed their cultural norms; even when, as in the history of smell in the West, the sense in question is suppressed or mostly ignored (Classen, Howes and Synnott 1994).

This interplay of various ways of conceiving the world could be compared to the experience of [[synesthesia]], where stimulus of one sense causes a perception by another, seemingly unrelated sense, as in musicians who can taste the intervals between notes they hear (Beeli ''et al''., 2005), or artists who can smell colors. Many individuals who have one or more senses restricted or lost develop a sensorium with a ratio of sense which favors those they possess more fully. Frequently the blind or deaf speak of a compensating effect, whereby their sense of touch or smell becomes more acute, changing the way they perceive and reason about the world; especially telling examples are found in the cases of "wild children", whose early childhoods were spent in abusive, neglected, or non-human environments, both intensifying and minimizing perceptual abilities (Classen 1991).