Limits of Your Senses
Your senses are remarkable, but they are also limited. They detect only a portion of what exists, and only within certain thresholds and ranges.
Questions you may have include:
- What are the limits of the senses?
- What can’t we sense?
- Why are they limited?
Thresholds and ranges
Each sense has a threshold — a minimum level needed before you notice anything — and a range of what it can detect. Human hearing, for example, spans roughly 20 to 20,000 hertz, and our eyes see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the visible light between about violet and red.
What we miss
Beyond those ranges lies much we cannot perceive directly: ultraviolet and infrared light, ultrasonic and very low-frequency sound, and many chemicals our noses cannot detect. Some animals sense things we cannot — dogs hear higher pitches, and many insects see ultraviolet.
Why the limits exist
Our senses evolved to capture the information most useful for survival, not everything that exists. The result is a detailed but partial picture of reality.
Summary
The senses work within thresholds and limited ranges — hearing roughly 20 to 20,000 hertz, vision only the visible band of light — so we miss much of what exists, including signals other animals detect. These limits reflect what was most useful to perceive, leaving us with a partial view of the world.