While this webpage has been dormant for a few years, this is not true of the activity behind the scenes. It really needs to be more of a blog. This needs to begin with telling the author’s atypical history which indicates how one’s interest in cochlear mechanics arose plus the progressive growth in awareness of how the field of auditory science has become heavily siloed. There are the basic scientists, the audiologists, the otologists, the neurologists etc. Each area is split into its own set of subspecialities, with its own outlook determined by its local priorities. For example, audiology has been split into speech pathology, (central) auditory processing, hearing aid technology and cochlear implants. Likewise otology tends to be split into hearing or vestibular matters and the raft of conditions calling for treatments of symptoms. Then, vestibular matters have their own subspecialities according as the suspected location of the pathology.

The following table shows the author’s durations (y) in different aspects of auditory science and practice. Although the central objective in each case remained cochlear mechanics, each of the three main periods was marked by its own strongly siloed environment, ignoring key factors of interest in the other branches. This resulted in a broadening one’s outlook and terms of reference. Remarkably all these areas have ignored another factor because, historically, it seemed irrelevant to acoustics.