Before I begin my explanation of the importance of training the hands at an early age, I would ask you to pay attention to how and why I plan to start teaching my granddaughter Emma how to make string figures.
I believe the basis for all high-order, cognitive thinking in humans is founded upon two unique attributes in our physiology: A brain large and complex enough for symbolic abstraction in language and a hand capable enough for fine manipulation. However, while anthropologists can largely track the gradual evolution and development of the hand, linguists cannot track a similar development for the speech centers of the brain. Brain size grew naturally, but language simply exploded into the fore, biologically speaking, once certain parameters were met.
Those parameters lie with the hand. In short, the development of the human mind – increased size in grey matter, wired in a manner such for a predisposition towards logical, adaptive thinking – is not merely correlated with the development of man’s most intricate manipulator, but is in fact caused by it. We became smart because our hands allowed us to be so: The hand, capable of so much, taught the mind to think of the world as something that could be manipulated, and thus to care about the world and learn of it. Because we have the ability to change our environment, we pay attention in ways we wouldn’t otherwise do.
Our hands are a locus of sensory nerves. If we were to map the human body by concentration of nerves, our hands would be the largest appendages we have, followed by the tongue. They command a great portion of the mind, and have been instrumental – a prophetic word, that – in training our minds to conceive of the world through them. We see our way through feeling, or more accurately we think our way through feeling.
Our ability to manipulate our environment – and, further, to develop tools to enhance our manipulation – gave us a sense for logic and throughput that are the mainstays of our intellect. From there we got symbolism: Once we were able to fashion tools, we then had an array of objects that each had a purpose. Soon, the objects became synonymous with the purpose. The objects became inextricable from their intent, and as such our concept of their intent – and how they are to be used – comes from direct manipulation.
From Tools to Symbols to Abstraction
With tools we have been able to externalize intent; to give object meanings, and turn them into symbols. As importantly as that, however, they in turn become extensions of our manipulators, and as such bring conscious thought to the process of experimentation.
The mimetic ability to reproduce an activity, which is to say, to recognize a pattern, is brought to the fore because you can see the results of your actions in front of you, and it came to be through a repeatable action through an externalized extension of self. Because the tool is there, the action is able to become symbolic: If I do this, this occurs. If I do that, that occurs. The tool I use achieves this result. This tool is for this result. I now have a hammer and, lo and behold, suddenly everything is a nail.
This ability to conceptualize systems of ever-increasing complexity and, finally, the ability to convert such systems into abstract entities is the story of human development. We deconstruct concepts mentally and turn them into symbols. With hands came the brain, came the creation of tools. With tools came the symbolism of intent: A hammer isn’t just an object but a concept of implementation. Language thus came through manual application.
What this means, conversely, is that our image of the world – the extent of our ability to conceive of things – is limited by the connections our minds have made through the application of our experiments and manipulation of the world. How well we think is inextricably tied to whether we’ve experienced a similar process during our more malleable stages of development. If we didn’t figure a problem out as children or teenagers, effectively, we lose the ability to tackle not only that problem as adults, but effectively lock ourselves out of that entire class of problem. It is far easier to forge connections early in development than later on.
We must then train ourselves to think of as wide a variety of conceptualizations as possible when we’re young. We have to play with these ideas – quite literally play with them – for they form the basis from which we are able to cope with and handle the world henceforth. As our minds were made through the experimentation and application of our fine manipulators, this means we must play with our hands as much and as varied a way as we are able
Tools Open the Mind
We unlock our cognitive potential by training our hands. This brings about some interesting concepts.
• The hands form the basis by which we view the world by training the mind in ways to manipulate it.
• We codify the experiments through languages of sorts, thanks to the symbols we’ve created through the connections we’ve forged in our minds. The patterns we discern through our activities become the framework by which everything else is categorized. For this reason, our ability to discern new languages is related to our experience with similar languages, and languages overall. For instance, the concepts behind programming languages are easy to understand if you have a general idea on how computers “think,” and learning a programming language will not only reinforce your knowledge of computers, but also make learning other programming languages far easier because they share common principles.
• As such, it behooves us to find things to do with our hands.
Musicians are prime examples of this for they, by practicing their instruments, honed their ability to understand abstract concepts and systems. They manipulate their tools to conceive music theory – the scales, the chord structure, the framework and arc of the piece, individually and in concert – such that these systems are worked out on the fly.
When you formulate words into a sentence, you aren’t consciously thinking of grammar, for you’ve practiced them to the point where you can take discrete entities and pick and choose from them at will into what you need them for. You speak through cliché and trope. For musicians, they do the same: They convert the language of theory and harmony faster than one can consciously work them out, given bars of symbols on a sheet of music. They can improvise in real time – changing the specifics of the system while keeping in line with the structure – without problem. This is fantastically speedy cognitive processing, and it’s due to the connections the mind has made. The instruments fuel that ability.
By applying that thought to the intricate movements of his hands – practicing through passages, musical phrases – the musician is able to physically work out a mental task, with immediate feedback. You know it sounds right because it sounds right.One of the interesting results of this practice, of this manipulation, is that in music schools, instrumental musicians on the whole tend to have a greater and easier understanding of music theory than do vocal musicians. Furthermore, they have a greater and easier understanding, overall, of all related concepts, such as math and physics.
There was no difference to begin with between instrumental and vocal musicians’ innate capacity for math or any of its applied disciplines; overall, they have equal potential to learn the concepts. What changed their developmental paths was the tool that has become the focal point for the thought process; specifically its usage by the hand. Application of the hands helped the minds wrap themselves around complex problems more easily – especially through the use of tools – and thus the instruments become arbiters of thought.
By applying that thought to the intricate movements of his hands – practicing through passages, musical phrases – the musician is able to physically work out a mental task, with immediate feedback. You know it sounds right because it sounds right.One of the interesting results of this practice, of this manipulation, is that in music schools, instrumental musicians on the whole tend to have a greater and easier understanding of music theory than do vocal musicians. Furthermore, they have a greater and easier understanding, overall, of all related concepts, such as math and physics.
There was no difference to begin with between instrumental and vocal musicians’ innate capacity for math or any of its applied disciplines; overall, they have equal potential to learn the concepts. What changed their developmental paths was the tool that has become the focal point for the thought process; specifically its usage by the hand. Application of the hands helped the minds wrap themselves around complex problems more easily – especially through the use of tools – and thus the instruments become arbiters of thought.