AWARENESS OF DIRECTION 



lem in his own human race. Gregg ( 1939 ) made a wide review of the liter- 

 ature to find that there have been very few studies of spatial orientation in 

 humans. More recently (1953) Witkin said that "despite its importance to 

 human adaptation, orientation has not been extensively studied at the 

 human level. ... It is particularly noteworthy that the specific way in 

 which sensory factors contribute to human orientation has been given rela- 

 tively little attention, even though in many instances the relevant sensory 

 mechanisms have received considerable study." 



Those crediting human beings with a special sense contend that it is 

 more highly developed in native aborigines, guides, or woodsmen. Jaccard 

 (1931), however, who reviewed many accounts of homing in man, con- 

 cluded that all possess the same endowment for orientation, regardless of 

 their station in life; there is no appreciable difference between the sensory 

 capacities of different human races or occupations. Dwellers of the city are 

 amazed at the Indian who travels so effortlessly about his wilderness; yet 

 he, in turn, does not understand how a child can enter the subway in New 

 York or London and emerge minutes later to find its way home through 

 the maze of streets and buildings all so alike. "Admittedly in ordinary 

 speech," says Thomson (1942:177) "we often talk of a person as having a 

 'good sense of direction' ( or perhaps *bump of locality' ) but by this, how- 

 ever, we merely mean that the individual has his wits about him in the par- 

 ticular respect of finding his way, and that he is observant and has good 

 conscious or unconscious memory for places seen, distances covered and 

 turns taken. If we stop to think about it, we realize that we have no inten- 

 tion of crediting him with possession of any special sense unknown to physi- 

 ology." 



Some students have referred to a "magnetic sense," an "inherited mem- 

 ory," or a "hereditary knowledge" by which birds are guided; and it is often 

 implied (if not clearly stated) that in young birds there must be an innate 

 foreknowledge of the geographic destination. The term "instinct" has been 

 very loosely used in the literature on migration, there being implied an in- 

 born awareness of the geographic destination and the direction thereto. 

 And now Huxley (1954:106) tells us that "several zoologists have recently 

 begun to consider psi as a possible explanation for the . . . extraordinary 

 and hitherto inexplicable performances of migrating birds and fish." * But 

 "if we concede it a scientifically legitimate sort of proceeding," writes Lor- 

 enz (1950:231), "to bridge any arbitrarily chosen gap in our present knowl- 



* Psi is the term used by parapsychologists in reference to a paranormal faculty. 



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