Originally posted by Amethyst Star
Just as another point of view, and this is just off of the top of my head, could you not also argue that there really is only one physical sense: touch. When you see something, it's technically light waves... in a (loose) sense touching the receptors in your eyes. When you hear, it's sound waves touching receptors in your ear. When you smell, it's the chemicals in the air that touch receptors in your nose. Same with taste. Then it's up to the receptors to interpret this data based on past experiences.
Ummm... sorry, Ame, but I gotta disagree here. Smell and taste, SURE, they CAN be reduced to "touch", I suppose, if you're willing to break the idea of senses down to a molecular level.

Sight is different. Whether "light waves" can actually touch anything is a VERY controversial point. They may causally impact things they come into contact with, but I do not know whtehr this can be classified as "touching" per se: presumably, for two things to touch, they must first be objects with physical dimensions.

Whether light waves fall into this categorry hass not yet been discovered... particle-wave theory, etc.

But like I said before, the idea of a "sense" is a colloquial, NOT a strictly scientific concept. Senses are not defined/seperated by the way in which they operate... all the science behind the operation of the senses is just the background machinery.

A SENSE is the result of that machinery... it is what is experienced, what is sensed, how we, as humans, experience the RESULT of all that backstage machinery.

Thus, when looking at senses, I think that trying to define the senses and seperate/conglomerate them by the backstage machinery through which they arise, is a little pointless. Sure, we can and should examine the backstage machinery to see how the senses work, but I do not hink we should try to CLASSIFY the senses by this backstage machinery...