On Smell and Scientific Practice

摘要

A delightful book about the science of smell, The Secret of Scent takes the reader through a tour of the almost infinite range of human olfactory possibilities. Luca Turin also presents the recent history of theories of smell, culminating with his own frequency theory. Turin possesses an unusually sensitive nose and has the ability to detect and describe, like a wine expert, the character of individual odors and complex scents, natural and synthetic, pleasing and noxious. A perfume guide he wrote became a best seller in France. His perfume reviews contain such colorful lines as "This thing smells like an infant's breath mixed with his mother's hair spray... What Rush can do, as all great art does, is create a yearning, then fill it with false memories of an invented past" and "Python ... belongs in a tree shaped diffuser dangling from the rearview mirror of a Moscow taxi." The success of his perfume guide led to invitations to visit and consult with scent and perfume manufacturers, from which Turin learned much about the process of creation of scent.