If they use
tools properly, they increase the efficiency of activity and
make the results more marketable. Tools supported the effort of
diversification of practical experiences, as well as the effort
of expanding the subsistence base. The means for creating tools
and other artifacts fostered other languages, such as the
language of drawing, on which early engineering also relied.
Here, an important point should be made. No tool is merely used.
In using it, the user adapts to the tool, becoming to some
extent, the used, the tool of the tool. The same is true of
language, writing, and literacy. They were developed by humans
seeking to optimize their activity. But humans have adapted
themselves to the constraints of their own inventions.
At the inception of writing, the tension between an imposed
written precision (as relative as this might appear from our
perspective today)-keeping language close to the object,
allowing into the language only objects that pictograms could
represent- and a rather diverse, however very unfocused, oral
language resulted in conflicts between the proponents of writing
and the guardians of orality (as documented in ancient Greek
philosophy). The written needed to be freed from the object as
much as the human being from a particular source of protein, or
a particular food source. It had to support a more general
expression (referring to what would become families, types,
classes of objects, etc.
Pages:
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395