Understanding the Roots of Thinking

Tools

The answer to the question, how did tool-making arise?, lies in an analysis of interlocking levels of tactile-kinesthetic data: the hardness of teeth; their resistance in impacting upon another object; their instrumental power to transform another object; undifferentiated power in terms of repetitive action (chewing); differentiated powers in terms of edges (even or uneven, definitive of contour or in relief). The following analysis will clarify how the idea of making tools in the image of teeth first arose, and how using tools (hammerstones as well as teeth) preceded the making of tools. In short, it will show how, on the basis of the obdurate hardness of teeth and stone, both the concept of a tool, and the concept of making a tool originated.

Early hominid tool-making originated and developed on the basis of concepts which were at once corporeal and topological. (This online summary will only discuss the corporeal. The supporting topological considerations can be found in Maxine Sheets-johnstone's The Roots of Thinking). That this is so will be shown by a sensory-kinetic analysis of the concepts foundational to the act of making a tool.

Tactile-kinesthetic analogy and the corporeal concepts of hardness

The idea of a similarity between teeth and stones is not a new one but neither has it been analyzed to any depth. The making of a tool out of stone involves conceptual thinking. At minimum it involves intention or purpose, and a conceptual knowledge of materials. Beyond these minima, it may also involve planning. From this perspective, a similarity in efficiency discovered between stones and teeth could only have been known before stones were made into tools and their comparative efficiency tested. The analogy was the basis upon which the very idea of stones serving as tools arose.

What characterises stones and teeth alike is their resistant hardness and textural smoothness. This hardness and smoothness of stones and teeth is a felt reality, a tactile-kinesthetic phenomenon. What was felt as hard by the tongue was analogous to what was felt as hard by the hand. Fingers felt along teeth, tongues felt along stones, the latter in a way similar to the way a chimpanzee runs its tongue over an object as a way of exploring it, or to the way human infants take things into their mouths for the same purpose. This perception of resistant hardness is integral to the idea of using a stone as a tool, but it does not fully explain the concepts underlying the making of tools. So in what else is the idea rooted?

"I cans" and material transformation

Teeth bite through flesh and vegetable matter; they grind through sinewy material; they scrape off or strip surface layers of objects. They are multi-purpose tools for transforming an original material into something softer, smaller, and/or juicier. The transformation of the object is not a visual phenomenon but a tactile-kinesthetic one, a process which is felt rather than seen. Because of this we can speak of mastication as a corporeal power or an ≥I can's≈. An I can is a domain of corporeal possibilities which includes the power to effectuate change (to transform something by chewing it, for instance), to bring something to pass (by shaking a tree, for instance), and to initiate certain possible actions (walking, throwing, or striking, for instance, as well as chewing or biting).

Given the validity of evolutionary theory, it is incontestable that, in a fundamental sense, hominid infants across time have discovered the same powers of action--walking, throwing, chewing, kicking, running--and with them, certain tactile-kinesthetic invariants of their hominid existence. This means that all hominids and modern humans feel the same things when performing certain actions.

The awareness of corporeal powers arises from tactile-kinesthetic activity: chewing, reaching, grasping, kicking, etc. the awareness of corporeal powers is thus not the result of reflective musings, whether with or without language. It is not a matter of wondering: what can I do? On the contrary, the sense of corporeal powers is the result either of moving or of already having moved. In chewing, the creature catches itself in the act of grinding something to pieces. An "I move" clearly precedes an "I can." In this sense, corporeal powers are the spawning ground of corporeal concepts. As the creature who is already chewing finds itself grinding something to pieces, so the creature who is grinding something to pieces is at the brink of conceptual awareness, namely the corporeal concept of transforming a material object.

Hence it can be said that chewing, biting, scraping, and the like, potentially engender first the general concept of material transformation, and second, derivative concepts engendered by an awareness of differential transformations.

Early hominids became conceptually aware of their power not only to transform material in general, but also to transform material differentially. On the one hand, they could chew; they could grind; they could bit; they could scrape; they could tear (material transformation). On the other hand, they could flake stones in ways peculiar to the use(s) they would be put (differential transformation). In both cases the potential to transform material differentially was clearly tied to certain corporeal powers and concepts. But it was also tied to teeth themselves.

Teeth, material transformation, and ancestral hominid stone tool-making

The power of teeth to transform objects is clearly a differentially felt power. In the most basic sense of transforming what stands out is chewing itself, that is, the repetitive action through which the most radical transformation of an edible object occurs. Because ancestral hominids were originally adapted to prolonged and powerful chewing it is likely that originally early hominids had concept of teeth simply as battering tools, tools which hammered away on the same object until it became smaller, juicier, softer.

The relationship between this primary use of teeth to impact over and over again upon the same object until it was reduced in size and consistency is similar to the use of a hammerstone (an archaeological designation) to batter a bone or nut until it opens. In each case, the action is repetitive, and in each case it is the repetitiveness of the action which brings results. Present-day chimpanzees who crack panda and coula nuts give evidence of precisely such a repetitive use of stones.

The idea of using a hammerstone in a way similar to the way in which one uses one's teeth, does require conceptual knowledge: it involves analogical insight. As with the awareness of corporeal powers, this conceptually-based recognition of similarity is not a reflective manoeuvre. Rather it is on the basis of an original corporeal datum--the power of teeth to transform objects--that the similarity between the efficacy of the repetitive action of chewing and the possible efficacy of a repetitive striking of something with a stone is grasped. In default of the corporeal concept of material transformation, there would be no basis for seizing upon the potential utility of a stone. Hence just as moving--"the original familiarity with kinesthetic abilities"--is the foundation of a global domain of I can's, and the domain of I can's the foundation of corporeal concepts, so corporeal concepts are the foundation of analogical insights. Interlocking levels of corporeal experience and understandings are clear. Equally in evidence is a credible foundation for positing analogical thinking at the origin of hominid stone tool-making in the first place.

The basic differential anatomy of hominid teeth is in fact analogous to the basic differential anatomy of early stone tools. The analogy is not at all strange since (as is generally held) the processing of food by stone tools replaced the processing of food by teeth.

The Concept of Edge

To demonstrate the relationship more precisely, the analogy must be spelled out more closely. For example, a flake tool, like an incisor, is relatively thin. The way in which it is normally gripped--pinched between finger(s) and thumb in the manner of a razor blade--is again a measure of its comparative girth. A flake has a single manually traceable edge. It has more readily distinguishable sides as well as a singular pronounced edge. It is a lengthier, more vertically-aligned object. Its surfaces are relatively flat like an incisor rather than rounded and irregular like molars.

The character of edges can be differentiated in a further respect. Edges either stand out in relief or they are definitive of contour. The molar row is uneven, even bumpy; edges are palpably discontinuous and stand out in relief. The functional edges of core tools are discontinuous in a similar manner, their cutting surface showing irregularities, their edges standing out prominently. In contrast, the functional edges of incisors and flake tools alike do not stand out in relief but are definitive of contour. Differential structure is of course directly related to differential transforming powers.

While the differential transforming power of edges is directly evident in both Oldowan tools and the act of eating, a more fundamental character of edges is equally apparent. From the perspective of sheer power, all edges are the same, that is, whatever has an edge has power. Common present-day metaphoric uses of the word edge in English bears out this recognition. That early hominid tool-makers were similarly aware of the fundamental power of an edge lends credence to the notion that originally, at the very beginning, rather than forging a specific tool, early hominids took whatever came their way. They used whatever pieces resulted from flaking. The critical character of a tool was not that it be of a certain shape but that it "have an edge."

Taken together, the above considerations show clearly that recognition of tactility and movement as modes of knowing can generate insight into perception and perceptual relationships, into intelligence, and ultimately into thinking itself. If stone tools constitute the singular hard data by which the perceptual acuities and intelligence of ancestral hominids may be judged, then they provide the basis for a twofold interpretation. They attest not only to certain conceptual origins but also to a certain mode of thinking: analogical thinking. This shows that thinking is modelled on the body, how the body functions as a semantic template in the development of fundamental new practices, and how, in effect, analogical thinking is rooted in the body.

Analogical Thinking

Analogical thinking makes what is alien intelligible or what is insignificant, significant by bringing it within the sphere of the already known--as stones to teeth. Insofar as it brings what is not immediately or fully significant or intelligible into a prior framework of intelligibility, it is axiomatic that its roots are in bodily life. The tactile-kinesthetic body is the known par excellence. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive in what other consistent and always accessible terms thought could have been--and could be--originally formulated.

In sum, analogical thinking is both basic to hominid thinking and basically corporeal. Its roots lie in a knowing tactility-kinesthesia. Together the thinking and the knowing system attest to the origin and elaboration of concepts. Together they inform the practice of ancestral hominid stone tool-making.

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