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

Frank R. Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 14, 1999

"A startling argument . . . provocative . . . absorbing." --The Boston Globe

"Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species."
--The New York Times Book Review

The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth.
        In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and  linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets.

"A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." --The Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The hand is, among other things, a complex symbol, representing both the creative and the prosaic. This blending of the spiritual and the mundane is what makes the hand unique, as it in turn makes us unique among animals. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson has taken on a heroic task: to explain the hand on both of these levels and to show us how we use these marvelous instruments to find and create meaning in our lives.

Anthropology, neuroscience, music, and puppetry all figure prominently in The Hand, which effortlessly guides the reader through its million-year biography. Brains and thumbs growing and changing to accommodate each other, discovering tools and language together, kicked us out of the monkey house for good. While there is still controversy over whether we are the brainiest animals on the planet, it is abundantly clear that we are the handiest.

This manipulative ability is our greatest strength and our most terrible flaw. Without hands we would have no Louvre but also no nerve gas. But, Wilson says, our situation is more complex. Our access to far greater means to achieve our ends gives us a greater hunger for meaning. We long to use our hands to satisfy our needs--whether spiritual or down-to-earth. This creation of meaning from nothing may be our greatest achievement. In the end, The Hand is brightly optimistic, showing that our reach truly does exceed our grasp. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Neurologist Wilson (Tone Deaf and All Thumbs?) gathers arguments from anthropology, psychology and medicine, along with the personal stories of musicians, backhoe operators, puppeteers and prestidigitators, to demonstrate the centrality to intelligence of our human hand. His account of the coevolution of hand and brain through our primate ancestors is fascinating, and the science he sites is rigorous and profound. The insights along the way are startling to the layperson even if old news to savants. For example, the size of a primate's neocortex is proportionate to the size of its maximum stable social group (our own being about 150). The emphasis throughout is on "the interaction of the biologic and social processes," as, for example, an artist, from early childhood, finds her way toward her instrument, and also as the species itself evolves over millennia, starting, as Darwin observed, with the freeing of the upper limbs by our descent from the trees. Out of the analysis of intelligence as fundamentally somatic there emerges a critique of educational theory. Wilson is a passionate advocate of process-centered teaching with attention to individual intelligences. Despite absorbing material and an ultimately cogent and important argument, his book dwells too long on inessential details of the case histories, and it sometimes loses steam in scholarly discourse; also, the organization into short, pithy chapters obscures the structure of the whole. Thus, although their work is rewarded, readers have to labor a bit too hard to tie the argument together. B&w illustrations throughout.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (September 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679740473
• ISBN-13: 978-0679740476
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #206,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for those interested in cognition of the hand August 4, 1999

By K. L Sadler VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An Inspiring Book October 9, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

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.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hand in Hand April 6, 2004

By Vitello Tonnato

Format:Paperback

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. Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hand in Hand April 6, 2004

By Vitello Tonnato

Format:Paperback

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. Read more ›