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Imagination; a Human's Special Sence Essay

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Daimaly Gines
10/25/12
FD #3
Expos, Section

Imagination: A Human’s Special Sense

Human beings have the ability to create their own individual worlds through imagination. However, the imagination is limited because of the constant use of technology and the reliance on vision. The technological culture has separated humans from the actual world and their senses; much like vision has done. In the essay “The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses”, Juhani Pallasmaa focuses on the exploration of the senses and how they interact with one another. We also see his discussion on how vision can affect the human experience. The more visually capable we are, the more we begin to lose our sense of imagination. Similarly in the essay …show more content…

We see that our imagination comes into play when our vision is obscured. Without the sense of vision, our other senses quickly assume richness and power. This occurs to blind people such as Hull, who at the age of forty-eight became completely blind. Sacks states that Hull “speaks of how the sound of the rain, never before accorded much attention, can now delineate a whole landscape for him…it throws a coloured blanket over previously invisible things” (304). In other words, we see that Sacks is showing us how strong Hull’s imagination was after becoming blind. Just because Hull became blind, it did not mean that Hull’s life was over. On the other hand, it was a new beginning for Hull. He was able to make use of his other senses and see how important they are. With Hull’s imagination also came a sense of intimacy with his surroundings. He felt as though with his strong visual imagery, he had a strong sense of closeness, which evolves from imagining. The term ‘delineate’ has a significant meaning in Sack’s text because imagination is what led Hull to be able to portray the images precisely in his mind. Similarly, Pallasmaa states, “anyone who has half-woken up to the sound of a train or an ambulance in a nocturnal city, and though his/her sleep experienced the space of the city with its countless inhabitants scattered within its structures, knows the

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