September-October 1998, Vol. W.W. Norton, 1998.
Any comparison needs a benchmark.
A mountain is not a mountain without the foothills or the sea for reference. Unique items or categories resist evaluation and understanding because they are unique. The human penchant for creating technologies ranks alongside language as a distinctive characteristic of our species. Although a few other species such as Galap gos finches and chimpanzees use tools, few shape and manipulate environmental objects to improve their utility the way our species does. Chimps strip twigs off sticks to make better termite catchers, beavers trim and arrange logs and sticks to make dams, various worms and insect larvae select sand grains from their environment and glue them together to make their domiciles, but each of these species is a one-trick pony.