Synesthesia

Abstract

The word synesthesia (also known as synesthesis) literally means co-sensing or sensing together and originates from the combination of the Greek words syn (together) and aesthesis (feel, sense). The concept is strongly related to that of sensus communis in relation to human senses, a term coined and employed by Thomas Aquinas in order to describe the universal principal (color category) under which individual entities are united (same colored objects), as recognized by Aristotle in De Anima (Schaeffer, 1990). Centuries later, John Locke made a reference to the narration of a blind man who could see the scarlet color while listening to a trumpet playing (Jewanski, Day, and Ward, 2009).