#edwin boring

[zmkccommonplace]

Intelligence is the ability to make connections.

Edwin Boring, US army psychologist, tweeted by @johnpollock

[escientescient]

The most important and greatest puzzle we face as humans is ourselves.

Edwin Boring

[audiozobe]

In 1942, Edwin Boring, a noted psychology historian at Harvard University, also apparently unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, took Hanig's raw data and calculated real numbers for the levels of sensitivity. These numbers merely denoted relative sensitivities, but they were plotted on a graph in such a way that other scientists assumed areas of lower sensitivity were areas of no sensitivity. The modern tongue-map was born. In 1974, a scientist named Virginia Collings re-examined Hanig's work and agreed with his main point: There were variations in sensitivity to the four basic tastes around the tongue. (Wineglass makers rejoiced.) But the variations were small and insignificant. (Wineglass makers ignored this part.) Collings found that all tastes can be detected anywhere there are taste receptors—around the tongue, on the soft palate at back roof of the mouth, and even in the epiglottis, the flap that blocks food from the windpipe.

Every day I learn something new. Also, Edwin Boring: definitely a kickass name for a mad scientist. Which I'm sure he wasn't. We should rename the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his honor. That would make it the B.I.T.

The Tongue Map: Tasteless Myth Debunked | LiveScience