According to Condillac, smell is “of all the senses, the one that seems to contribute least to the knowledge of the human mind”. This widely shared conception since the 18th century will be challenged at this interdisciplinary conference.
Beyond the necessary knowledge for survival (such as recognising the quality of air and food) and social stereotypes conveyed by olfaction, olfactory knowledge is an integral part of many scholarly, medical, artisanal, and domestic practices. In the field of crafts, olfaction is most often tacit knowledge, and smell is often used to indicate adulterated materials or advanced chemical transformation processes. Meanwhile, the emergence of synthetic raw materials, which encouraged creativity in perfumery, paved the way for the formulation of aesthetic judgments based on smell. Since the 20th century, perfumers and oenologists have reinforced the idea of olfactory expertise.
The various uses of smell invite us to reconsider the relationships between tacit and prescriptive knowledge and their multiple combinations. By focusing on the uses of olfactory knowledge in multiple contexts, this conference should allow to reconsider the status of this sense, from the “olfactory revolution” identified in the 18th century up to the most recent advances in neurosciences.