The Philosophy of Tools

Man has transformed his immediate environment into one of material culture, and consequently himself into civilized man, by means of tools and languages. Although tools are no less important than languages, they have been underestimated. For tools are not merely articles of utility but serve all of the human needs. Tools are material objects employed to alter other material objects (where man himself is one of the material objects). Tools may be anything from a bulldozer to a violin. With the increase in civilization the use of tools rises sharply. Human inheritance is genetic and cultural. The cultural inheritance is external and is transmitted through learning: how to make and use tools. There is a feedback from tools; in a certain sense it is true that tools make the man. But man can choose his responses: what is it that he wants to feel? Tools tie man to his material environment but they also make it possible for him to achieve goals which are purely human; they lift him above the other animals. It is man the toolmaker who is the spiritual adventurer. The values carried by some tools are those toward which he aspires: what Bach could do with the organ and Shakespeare with the stage. It is the tools which are manufactured on his own planet which enable him to escape from it. M an has transformed his immediate environment into one of material culture and consequently also himself into civilized man through meanings conveyed by his tools and his languages. Since nearly all human enterprises have required the use of languages, their importance can scarcely be overestimated. However tools are hardly less important, yet they have received far less attention. This is perhaps because hammers are regarded as tools but not paintings, cooking pots but not theatres. Ordinarily, one thinks of tools as merely articles of utility, having a function for man of serving only his most basic needs. However, I shall try to show that tools serve all of his needs, including those usually thought of in less material terms. I should like to use the name artifacts for material objects which have been altered through human agency. There are two kinds of artifacts: tools and signs. Tools are material objects employed to alter other material objects. Signs are material objects employed to refer to other material objects. Tools are artifacts which enable man to change material objects more than he could without them. It is less familiar that signs are artifacts also; but these are merely sounds or marks on some hard material shaped to carry meaning. A combination of signs is called a language. There is no special name for a combination of tools but the occurrence is quite common. Tools may be combined in industry, as in a production unit, or they may be combined in a science, as when spectroscopes and cameras are attached to telescopes in astronomy. Here, however, we shall confine our attention to tools. In general, tools are material objects directed toward other material objects, bulldozers to move earth, drills to sink oil wells, dams to conserve water or to produce power by utilizing its gravity fall. But tools are employed by man also to effect alterations in himself. These range all the way from surgical instruments which alter his physiological mechanism to works of art which affect his aesthetic sensibilities. I use the term "tool" as a synonym for instrument, apparatus, device, contrivance, appliance, utensil, vehicle, machine, and engine. Tools are of many kinds. A thimble is a tool, a book is a tool, but so is a house or a street. There is little within the immediate environment of any inhabitant of a modern city which has not been altered through human agency, little if anything which is as it was before the advent of man; not the ground beneath his feet, which is paved, nor the walls before his eyes, which are the sides of the buildings he has constructed, nor even the air he breathes, which is sure to be mixed with the smoke and dust of industrial waste. But what is true in the city is almost equally This content downloaded from 207.46.13.149 on Mon, 03 Oct 2016 06:14:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms