vomitus (idea)

So far, I've never thrown up while others around me were doing the same. But life's taken me a few times into caring for someone else throwing up -- toilets, sinks, buckets, towels, garbage cans, bedsheets -- many different times and places, with one common element: the stinging, acrid smell of gastric acid, and the immediate ensuing attack of dizzying nausea. Nothing else -- no smell or sight no matter how disgusting, atrocious, or frightening -- comes even close to sheer nauseating power of the smell of gastric acid.

Last night tending to my friend, I thought about it for a little while. Why this strong correlation? Everyone I've talked to has this reaction, and it doesn't seem culturally determined or socially constructed -- it truly seems as if it's from deeply embedded instinctual part of the human brain.

Picture this: a hungry clan of Homo erectus finds strange berries or meat from a week-dead goat. The first one of them gorges, and then vomits. The others, smelling, throw up involuntarily, expunging themselves of the poisonous food before they've managed to eat much. Thus: the whole clan is healthier, and they're less likely to all be incapacitated at once from food poisoning.

Vomiting is a prelingual and pre-conscious form of communication. The bile-induced-nausea is an evolutionary advantage.

I'm not one to believe sociobiological explanations when they try to explain things like homosexuality, male vs. female promiscuity, or generosity. These types of discussions usually suffer from the naturalistic fallacy and encourage bad science and bad politics.

Like those theories, my explanation really adds nothing on its own: it's not a real explanation because it isn't verifiable or falsifiable*. However, it does increase my suspicion of unsubstantiated alternate theories (such as that found at vomit) and could be used to guide the search for a true scientific explanation.

I mean, if anyone cares.