Synaesthesia
Way back when, Kandinsky wanted to paint music. At the time few understood what he was trying to get at although more recently our understanding of synaesthesia has been on the upswing. And research reported a couple days ago takes us to the next level: it seems that even those of us—that is, most people—who are not synaesthetes do, at some unconscious level, appreciate synaesthetic images in similar ways. So why not other as-yet-to-be-explained perceptual phenomena? The British Association for the Advancement of Science dipped its toe in the water yesterday, sponsoring a controversial session on anomalous research at their annual conference. Telepathy, life after death—the sort of stuff lots of people experience in one way or another but that science generally shies away from. Kudos to the BA for keeping an open mind!
Posted by George Kenney on September 6, 2006 10:49 AM 
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Comments
Thanks for the links. I never knew the word "synaesthesia" before, though I have experienced it. Thought it was simply my imagination. Regarding the BA meeting, I'm always struck by how some people simply refuse to consider new ideas or viewpoints. I myself have had premontory dreams, and consider this not to be very unusual. In once instance, the dream coincided with the actual death of that person at that time. This was a person I was not thinking about at all during the previous days and weeks. I could go on, but why bother. Thanks again for your site.
Posted by: Judy Truett | September 8, 2006 1:25 PM
The notion that there is some sort of universal set of synesthetic correspondences is intriguing. I've long categorized different kinds of musical instruments / sounds as having color and belonging to one of the four elements, and noted that others tend to agree. Music producers often speak of making an instrument sound more like a particular color, for example, and I've noted references to "fiery" saxophone riffs, "earthy" drumming, and the like.
But there is a particular facet of synaesthesia which seems to cause the categorization symbols in very unique ways from person to person. For example, I, like many synesthetes, have color-correspondences for both letters and numbers. "A" is red, "6" is green, and so on. But these schemes rarely match among synesthetes - each has his/her personal classification set.
Posted by: James M | September 18, 2006 8:01 PM