The primary reason may be due to how humans experience and prioritize their senses. Here are a few factors to consider:
- Prevalence of Visual and Auditory Senses: Humans primarily rely on sight and sound for navigating their environment and interacting with others, making these senses more pronounced and noticeable in our consciousness. Consequently, changes in lighting or sounds are immediately perceived and often commented upon.
- Adaptation to Ambient Smells: Humans quickly adapt to persistent smells in an environment. When you enter a space, you might notice its smell initially, but soon it fades from your awareness unless it’s particularly strong or changes. This phenomenon, known as olfactory fatigue or adaptation, might explain why people don’t commonly comment on the lack or presence of smells unless they are novel or intense.
- Less Immediate Impact on Perception: While smells can evoke strong reactions and memories, they often don’t have the immediate impact on our perception and navigation of spaces as light levels or sounds do. Smells are usually secondary sensory experiences in most contexts, not fundamentally altering how we see or interact with our environment.
- Communication Habits: Language and communication are also crucial factors. People might not have developed a habit of verbally acknowledging smells to the same extent as visual or auditory experiences. Cultural norms, language expressions, and common phrases might also play a role in how we articulate or fail to articulate our sensory experiences.
- Social Appropriateness: Discussing smells, especially unpleasant ones, might be deemed socially inappropriate or impolite in many contexts, discouraging people from commenting on them openly.
- Limited Vocabulary: The English language (and many others) has a more limited vocabulary for describing smells compared to sights and sounds, making it harder to communicate about olfactory experiences precisely and meaningfully.
Summary:
Overall, while smell is a significant and influential sense, it often operates more subtly and subconsciously than sight and hearing. The combination of biological factors, like olfactory fatigue, social norms, and linguistic limitations, might explain why people don’t comment on smells as readily as they do on visual and auditory experiences.
