The papers in this highly engaging and original new book come from an international conference held at the University of Bremen in 2002 on color, smell, and language. The book consists of 13 chapters written by 15 contributors, from such disparate fields as linguistics, psychology, neurology, and philosophy. Simply put, all the authors ask, “How is it possible to speak about colors and odors?” In most cases, words are not readily available, and when we attempt to describe some fragrance, shade, or hue we can only do so with some degree of difficulty. And can I really be sure that my listener knows exactly what I mean when I say this is a “desert orange” car or that perfume is “musky”?

The study of color nomenclature and perception, of course, has a long history. The sense of smell, however, has been of comparatively minor interest in spite of the enormous amounts of money spent on research and advertising in the production of perfumes, household products, foods, incense, and cosmetics (some of which are described here). There are several reasons for this. First, humans have highly developed visual and acoustic perception systems compared to their olfactory ability. Evolutionarily speaking, being less endowed to perceive and respond to scent most likely meant less linguistic energy expended on it – thus, today, the paucity of odor vocabulary in most languages. But as important as neurophysiology – and perhaps more so, as several papers here point out – is the physical nature of scent itself. While colors can be quantified and measured according to the characteristics of light (wavelength, amplitude, and so on), no such metrics are available for smell. And this seems to be reflected in language: While color in most languages can generally be described as a kind of continuum (orange being a yellowish red, for example), scents seem unordered and discrete.

It is the desire to compare perceptional systems lying at these two extremes that is the motivation for examining them together in this volume. Each of the papers addresses various issues on the interplay between perception, cultural activity, and linguistic representation. But as several authors remind us, strictly speaking, languages do nothing more than label certain activation patterns individuals have in the brain in response to certain stimuli; they really say nothing about external objects themselves “out there.” Interface these labels with the social collectivity, and things get complicated very quickly. However, there seem to be a few common features that color and scent share. Both are susceptible to metaphorical usage and have a great capacity to arouse further connotations. There is also the notable presence of synesthesia – linguistic cross-modality references due to humans living in a multi-sensory world – found in the descriptions of both smells and colors (a topic explicitly examined in three papers).

While this book is not the first in linguistics or cognitive science to tackle color or olfaction, no previous volume has examined them together with similar theoretical goals and vocabulary. All the papers are accessible to nonspecialists, and there is much to offer even the casual linguist and anthropologist. Those who study color nomenclature or sensation, however, will no doubt smile brightly after sniffing through this fine book.