“The senses” is the introductory chapter of the book Sensory Transduction and describes early studies in the anatomy of sense organs and physiology of the senses. It introduces methods in physiology and molecular biology, which were critical tools used to unlock the secrets of sensation, including intracellular and extracellular recording, patch-clamp recording, gene cloning and expression, and structural studies such as cryo-EM. It concludes by describing in detail the discovery of the piezo proteins, which are the stretch-sensitive channels now known to be responsible for much of mammalian touch and proprioception.