Touch, A Natural History of the Senses-Response

This a response to Touch by Diane Ackerman. This reading was very eye opening. Many points were brought up about things that I haven't really thought about. It's things we know but not things we think about knowing. I agree with the line "language is steeped in metaphors of touch". We describe things with touching adjectives, we say we lost touch with people when we haven't talked to them in a while, and say something touched us when we care about it. These are things I didn't think about. I thought it was just how we talk, I didn't realize the expressions really had origins. Ackerman describes care for premature babies in one section that seems to last forever. Why she felt it was so significant I'm still not sure. It wasn't until the last two sentences that I think I really got what she was saying. She brings up that information is usually communicable in a touch and that other senses have organs you can focus on but touch is everywhere. Thinking about it, this is true. Eyes see, noses smell, tongues taste, but touch gives a lot of information. Touch tells us how to know what things look like. We've touched a hat so we know its round. We've touched water so we know its wet. That is mainly what I took away from this reading. Without touching things we wouldn't know about them. We could see them but without touching them we wouldn't know their true shape; how big they are, how thick or thin they are, how light or heavy they are. This reading opened my eyes to something so simple. It made me think about things I normally wouldn't. Before the reading I didn't think twice about an orange being round. But now I realize that I know an orange is round because I've touched an orange, I've felt the curves and roundness and true shape of the orange that my eyes alone couldn't tell me. Touch by Diane Ackerman is a very profound and eye-opening read.