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

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