Customer Reviews

The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a neuroscientist, educator, and a Deaf person, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Wilson's insights into how the hand shapes our lives and our brains. He raises a lot of questions yet to be investigated about how crucial the manipulation of the hands are to cognitive learning. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the questions he's raised both for normal people and those of us who use manual language over speech, and whether those choices in means of communication cause the brain to be mapped differently. Dr. Wilson writes with humor and gives fascinating insights into the worlds of people whose advocations depend upon their hands. This long neglected part of our body should now receive the attention it deserves in shaping our minds.

Perhaps the thing I liked the best about this book is the tone of reverence that Dr. Wilson has for the subject of his life's work - the hand. Clearly there is a lot at stake for the author in his work - it comes through in everything in this book - and that's the thing that I found inspiring about it. If only we could all (or at last many of us!) feel the same way about the focus of our work.

I "dinged" it one star for two reasons - I would have liked to have seen more attention played to the concept of how "the hand shapes the mind." A lot of the book seemed like a very well written elaboration on the standard neurologic model of "motor programs" and the brain's role in controlling the hand, etc. The idea that the "history" and "education" of the hand has a reciprocal role in shaping the mind is a very exciting concept, and I would have liked to have seen it explored in more depth.

Second, I thought the book rambled at times. Dr. Wilson tended to bounce around a lot between neurology, anthropology, educational policy, etc. and it wasn't always clear what was driving the transitions from one area to the other.

On the whole, this is an excellent book offering a very unique perspective on the mind and human nature through the investigation of the miraculous but little appreciated hand.

We routinely speak of "grasping" ideas, or "holding principles dear" or examining concepts "within our reach." For Frank Wilson, a neurologist who specializes in the bizarre and tragic affliction "musicians cramp," these turns of phrase are not accidental. Integrating brain, mind, and body - forging a psychology of the normal - animates Frank Wilson's study of the human hand.

He marshals evidence from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, anatomy and medicine, linguistics and engineering to discuss the co-evolution of hand and brain within human and human-antecedent societies. Leaving the trees for the savanna set in motion an enormous number of changes for our australopithicine ancestors - the most significant of them the bipedal gait that freed those pre-human hands. We call one of our distant ancestors homo habilis - handyman -- and the intelligence built into our remarkable hands over time gave the evolving human species great advantages in meeting uncertain futures. (Unhappily hands are preserved less well than skulls, so anthropologists naturally skew their investigations.) Wilson describes the mechanics of what we can do that our primate ancestors and cousins couldn't and can't. It is impossible to read these descriptions of the repertoires of hand and arm movements without replicating them. Because chimpanzees' fingers point straight down and ours angle toward the thumb, they are unable to bring thumb to meet pinky. A chimp can't power-grip a screwdriver, throw a baseball, or play a guitar. And neither can he use his fingers in a cluster that makes the three way "chuck" that lets us hold a pen or a brush.

Hand, brain, and eye co-evolved to track a target - hapless gazelle, thick browed foe, or catcher's mitt are all the same in this long view of hand coordinating with eye.One anthropologist calls us "the lop-sided ape." Nine out of ten of us are right-handed. Wilson presents us with an evolutionary parable in this regard. We throw with our right hands. Our left-brain largely controls that movement. Our right brain, and hence our dominant left eye, processes broad fields of visual information. So a right handed stone-tosser, an ancient spear-chucker, or a major league pitcher all divide their attention naturally and efficiently.

Our built-in capacity for language, the most singular human quality, is connected with our hands, too. Deep instinctual structures are revealed when speaking is decoupled from sound and when signing is teased apart from gesture. Deaf people who articulate with their hands activate the same areas of the brain as ordinary speakers. (Oliver Sacks has wondered if sign-users linguisticize space the way the rest of us spatialize language.) I've occasionally watched young hands-on museum-goers scribble, draw, and write - and their tongues often loll purposefully at the corners of their mouths, as if to help along their fingers. Wilson discovers something tyrannical in the celebration of multiple intelligences once we've slain "the dragon of General Intelligence" - we're likely to recruit skills from among the multiple intelligences for our specific purposes, and so snub the others. Culture divides and directs human intelligence, specializing some of us early as athletes, others as musicians, or readers. For Wilson, becoming "handy" is an antidote to specialization and its discontents. Most of us need a hobby, and whether we paint sonnets on grains of rice for fun, climb a sheer rock face, or spoon applesauce with a backhoe, our respite is likely to come hand-delivered.

We routinely speak of "grasping" ideas, or "holding principles dear" or examining concepts "within our reach." For Frank Wilson, a neurologist who specializes in the bizarre and tragic affliction "musicians cramp," these turns of phrase are not accidental. Integrating brain, mind, and body - forging a psychology of the normal - animates Frank Wilson's study of the human hand.

He marshals evidence from anthropology, philosophy, psychology, anatomy and medicine, linguistics and engineering to discuss the co-evolution of hand and brain within human and human-antecedent societies. Leaving the trees for the savanna set in motion an enormous number of changes for our australopithicine ancestors - the most significant of them the bipedal gait that freed those pre-human hands. We call one of our distant ancestors homo habilis - handyman, and the intelligence built into our remarkable hands over time gave the evolving human species great advantages in meeting uncertain futures. (Unhappily hands are preserved less well than skulls, so anthropologists naturally skew their investigations.) Wilson describes the mechanics of what we can do that our primate ancestors and cousins couldn't and cant. It is impossible to read these descriptions of the repertoires of hand and arm movements without replicating them. Because chimpanzees' fingers point straight down and ours angle toward the thumb, they are unable to bring thumb to meet pinky. A chimp can't power-grip a screwdriver, throw a baseball, or play a guitar. And neither can he use his fingers in a cluster that makes the three way "chuck" that lets us hold a pen or a brush.

Hand, brain, and eye co-evolved to track a target - hapless gazelle, thick browed foe, or catcher's mitt are all the same in this long view of hand coordinating with eye.One anthropologist calls us "the lop-sided ape." Nine out of ten of us are right-handed. Wilson presents us with an evolutionary parable in this regard. We throw with our right hands. Our left-brain largely controls that movement. Our right brain, and hence our dominant left eye, processes broad fields of visual information. So a right handed stone-tosser, an ancient spear-chucker, or a major league pitcher all divide their attention naturally and efficiently.

Our built-in capacity for language, the most singular human quality, is connected with our hands, too. Deep instinctual structures are revealed when speaking is decoupled from sound and when signing is teased apart from gesture. Deaf people who articulate with their hands activate the same areas of the brain as ordinary speakers. (Oliver Sacks has wondered if sign-users linguisticize space the way the rest of us spatialize language.) I've occasionally watched young hands-on museum-goers scribble, draw, and write - and their tongues often loll purposefully at the corners of their mouths, as if to help along their fingers. Wilson discovers something tyrannical in the celebration of multiple intelligences once we've slain "the dragon of General Intelligence" - we're likely to recruit skills from among the multiple intelligences for our specific purposes, and so snub the others. Culture divides and directs human intelligence, specializing some of us early as athletes, others as musicians, or readers. For Wilson, becoming "handy" is an antidote to specialization and its discontents. Most of us need a hobby, and whether we paint sonnets on grains of rice for fun, climb a sheer rock face, or spoon applesauce with a backhoe, our respite is likely to come hand-delivered.

This book opened my eyes to the complexities of the anatomy and physiology of our hands. I had never thought how many muscles, articulations, nerves and neurons were involved in an apparently simple action like grasping, the difficulties in eye-body position-motion coordination and the immediate sensor-motor feedback it implies, the different forms of grasping that we have compared to apes, how we are able of independent motion of the fingers with certain speed and strength like in playing piano, as well as of sustained strength like in mountain climbing. I have always appreciated my hands, but I was not aware that the way our shoulders and their joints are constructed allowing for a wide angle of rotation were so critical to our basic hand movements. In short, after reading this book you will feel a kind of reverence for your upper extremities as a whole.

The more technical and difficult part of the book is devoted to explaining the anatomy of our hands, starting from the shoulders to each of the fingers and how each part evolved by comparing similar structures in apes and in human ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy), homo erectus, etc. The other part is devoted to illustrating the extraordinary abilities of our hands by interviewing people that have developed special manual skills like puppet-players, jongleurs, surgeons, magicians or "prestidigitators", artists of different kind, musicians, mountain climbers, jewelers, etc., and narrating how they discovered and perfected their skills and how this has marked their entire existence.

The book in general is very interesting and illuminating, however, the main hypothesis promised in the book's title "The Hand. How its use shapes the brain, language and human culture" and the main reason I bought it, is not explained and supported in a sufficient manner. The author briefly mentions the representation of the different body parts in the cerebral cortex (Wilder Penfield's and T. Rasmussen's famous "homunculus"), where the hand occupies a very important part, as well as some evolutionary language acquisition/tool making theories. He also explains some biological and cultural evolutionary theories, like the excellent theory presented by Merlin Donald in Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, which I had read previously and which I had found deeply engaging. M. Wilson basically claims that the use of our hands and the required eye-hand coordination by our early brains could have set the brain-stage for the acquisition of language. That's it, he mentions the theory with no supporting evidence; even without explaining how both could be linked together or how this could have happened...kind of frustrating! Has some scientist explored these ideas further? For an easy to read and interesting approach to the mind-body issue I recommend The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better. So this is an excellent book regarding what it covers, but it fell short of the expectations it raised in its title.

This book is deep. I'll need to read it two or three times to understand its implications. Its thesis is that the human hand, with its range and complexity of movement, its ability to control external objects, and its interrelationship and parallel development with the brain, has enabled our uniquely human capacity for thought, communication and creativity. Its stated mission is to discover the "physical roots" of this evolutionary development. Fascinating and well written. Great stuff.

This book, in addition to showing the classic detail of the functions and anatomy of the hands, also shows how we use it every day without concern about and how our cultural codes are changed from those uses. The archaeology that Wilson's do about perception of hand in a historic line is very detailed and interesting.

Fascinating chapters on the difference between a human hand and a chimp hand, on the skill of the marionette master, on the function of the thumb, and on the skill of the juggler. It was also surprising that half the book was a defense of Darwinism along the lines of Dawkins. There is no book that I know of like it in the good chapters and I would like much more in this area. It is a waste of paper in the Darwinism chapters if you have already read or don't want to read Dawkins.

This book shares important information in a warm and personal, yet very professional style about the importance of the movement of the hand and the development of the human brain. It would be good for every educator and everyone who legislates about education to be required to read this book.

I haven't read this book yet, so this must be a pReview. I did see the PBS evening news interview with the author and was intrigued enough by that discussion to move The Hand to the top of my To Be Read List here at =Rick's Internet Cafe=.