Five wits

For the five senses, see Sense.

These are the v. wyttes remeuing inwardly:
Fyrst, commyn wytte, and than ymaginacyon,
Fantasy, and estymacyon truely,
And memory, as I make narracyon;
Each upon other hath occupacyon.

Stephen Hawes, The Pastime Of Pleasure, XXIV "Of the Five Internall Wittes"[1]

Hering, sight, smelling and fele,
cheuing er wittes five,
All sal be tint er sal pas,
quen þe hert sal riue.

Cursor Mundi, lines 17017–17020[2]

In the time of William Shakespeare, there were commonly reckoned to be five wits and five senses.[3] The five wits were sometimes taken to be synonymous with the five senses,[3] but were otherwise also known and regarded as the five inward wits, distinguishing them from the five senses, which were the five outward wits.[4][5]

Much of this conflation has resulted from changes in meaning. In Early Modern English, "wit" and "sense" overlapped in meaning. Both could mean a faculty of perception (although this sense dropped from the word "wit" during the 17th century). Thus "five wits" and "five senses" could describe both groups of wits/senses, the inward and the outward, although the common distinction, where it was made, was "five wits" for the inward and "five senses" for the outward.[6]

The inward and outward wits are a product of many centuries of philosophical and psychological thought, over which the concepts gradually developed, that have their origins in the works of Aristotle. The concept of five outward wits came to medieval thinking from Classical philosophy, and found its most major expression in Christian devotional literature of the Middle Ages. The concept of five inward wits similarly came from Classical views on psychology.

Modern thinking is that there are more than five (outward) senses, and the idea that there are five (corresponding to the gross anatomical features — eyes, ears, nose, skin, and mouth — of many higher animals) does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. (For more on this, see Definition of sense.) But the idea of five senses/wits from Aristotelian, medieval, and 16th century thought still lingers so strongly in modern thinking that a sense beyond the natural ones is still called a "sixth sense".[7]

  1. ^ Stephen Hawes. The Pastime Of Pleasure. Early English Poetry, Ballads and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages. Vol. XVII. Read Books.
  2. ^ Richard Morris (ed.). Cursor Mundi. Read Books. p. 974.
  3. ^ a b Horace Howard Furness (1880). "King Lear". Shakespeare. Vol. 5 (7th ed.). Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co. p. 187. ISBN 9780742652866.
  4. ^ "wit". The Merriam-Webster new book of word histories. Merriam-Webster. 1991. pp. 508. ISBN 9780877796039.
  5. ^ Clive Staples Lewis (1990). "Sense". Studies in Words (2nd (republished) ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 147. ISBN 9780521398312.
  6. ^ Charles Laurence Barber (1997). "Changes of Meaning". Early modern English. Edinburgh University Press. p. 245. ISBN 9780748608355.
  7. ^ John Raymond Postgate (1995). "Microsenses". The outer reaches of life. Cambridge University Press. p. 165. ISBN 9780521558730.