McCredie: Balance

From Scienticity

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Scott McCredie, Balance : In Search of the Lost Sense. New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2007. viii + 296 pages with appendix, notes, index.

Scott McCredie is a journalist who has written for Smithsonian Magazine, as well as other publications. This is his first book.

Balance, the sense of equilibrium that keeps us on our toes, so to speak, in a properly aligned position, is something few of us pay much attention to...until that balance is disrupted. And it seems that this is becoming ever more common these days.

McCredie explores how the body regulates balance, the history of medical knowledge about balance, and new therapies in treating people with balance issues. While there are occasional technical terms used, the book is not difficult to read or understand, and the stories of people whose lives have been disrupted by their 'lack of balance' are truly awesome! Funny, disquieting, encouraging, fascinating examples of what it's like simply not to have what we assume everyone has: a sense of which end is up! There is an appendix of 'balance exercises' in the back of the volume, just in case you want to see if you can expand your equilibrium...and they're fun too!

Here's the final paragraph of McCredie's text:

One of the more intriguing things I discovered about the human balance system is that it is both the oldest and newest of senses. By oldest, I mean on an evolutionary scale. We possess otolith organs, for instance, equivalent in form and function to those of lobsters and crayfish, which originated some 360 million years ago, according to the fossil record. And newest refers of course to how late in the game we humans have come to recognize and understand this enormously important faculty, which only in the past fifty years has begun to achieve what Dr. Terence Cawthorne, the influential British otologist from the 19040s called "The dignity of a sense. If Aristotle had known what we know today, he would surely have included balance on his list of human senses. Consequently, schoolchildren today would recite six instead of the traditional five. And we would all stand in greater awe of this ancient, intricate, vital, and easily lost power our bodies possess.

While I would not consider this one of the most felicitous science-related books I've read in the last few months, it is certainly worth the trouble to read and digest. After all, we do need to keep a sense of balance in all things, don't we?

-- Notes by SJB