Now we know, because we have video evidence, that a pig can use a tool. We can add pigs to birds and chimps as fellow tool-users. Makes me think that when Homo habilis made a tool and left it on the ground so that we could find it some 1.5 to 2.1 million years later, he (or she, of course), might have simply been imitating other organisms, critters that we’ve decided are less intelligent than we. What if we got our inventiveness from imitating? Homo habilis sees chimp use tool; Homo habilis uses tool. Archaeologist claims Homo habilis is first tool-user.
Maybe I’m not inventive enough, and maybe in the Great Chain of Being I’m not “a little lower than the angels, but much higher than animals.” Instead, I might be just a pinch higher than a pig. I certainly haven’t put together an infomercial on my latest gizmo that makes life easier for millions—available now at Walmart. So, I feel a little dumb, realizing that I hold no patents and that I made nothing that advances modern technology. I use readymade tools, however, so I’m at least on the level of Pigcasso, the painting pig; I can be taught to use tools.
A pig in an online YouTube video can be seen to use a stick to dig.* It appears to be an uncoached pig. That makes it, in my eyes at least, an inventor of sorts, though not one who will advertise using a digging stick on late night TV. For want of a shovel at times, I, too have used a stick to dig a small hole. Sticks make good holes when one wants to plant seeds in a flowerpot as I have discovered on my own (Am I the first?). And obviously, sticks are just as useful in digging up seeds, or tubers, or mushrooms, or even places for piglets to rest.
Maybe you are an inventor, one of those who sees a physical process, recognizes a way to enhance that process, and invents the gizmo that makes the process easier. That’s great. Technology can be wonderful. We couldn’t support modern civilization without it.
Unfortunately, civilization’s problems aren’t all physical processes. We have a mix of emotional, philosophical, social, and political problems, generally all of our own making. We excel at making problems, don’t we? Over the course of 200 to 300 thousand years of our existence as members of the animal kingdom, we seem to have generated problems at a rate faster than we have generated tools to solve them.
So, here’s a task to try your skills as an inventor. I want to see your late-night infomercial that sells your solution to those particularly human problems. I want to be so sold on your solution to life’s problems that I’ll order not one, but two—I am willing to pay the extra “handling charge” for your BOGO offer. No doubt, I’ll be pleased with my purchase, which, I believe, will, like some super flashlight cast brilliant light on my life, or, like some super sunglasses, allow me to see through life’s obfuscating glare. I hope you soon get a patent on your solution to life’s problems. I’m getting out the credit card right now.
*https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/pigs-caught-video-using-tools-first-time and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHfCkc8VCuI
See also my posting called “Pigcasso” (9/26/19).
Maybe I’m not inventive enough, and maybe in the Great Chain of Being I’m not “a little lower than the angels, but much higher than animals.” Instead, I might be just a pinch higher than a pig. I certainly haven’t put together an infomercial on my latest gizmo that makes life easier for millions—available now at Walmart. So, I feel a little dumb, realizing that I hold no patents and that I made nothing that advances modern technology. I use readymade tools, however, so I’m at least on the level of Pigcasso, the painting pig; I can be taught to use tools.
A pig in an online YouTube video can be seen to use a stick to dig.* It appears to be an uncoached pig. That makes it, in my eyes at least, an inventor of sorts, though not one who will advertise using a digging stick on late night TV. For want of a shovel at times, I, too have used a stick to dig a small hole. Sticks make good holes when one wants to plant seeds in a flowerpot as I have discovered on my own (Am I the first?). And obviously, sticks are just as useful in digging up seeds, or tubers, or mushrooms, or even places for piglets to rest.
Maybe you are an inventor, one of those who sees a physical process, recognizes a way to enhance that process, and invents the gizmo that makes the process easier. That’s great. Technology can be wonderful. We couldn’t support modern civilization without it.
Unfortunately, civilization’s problems aren’t all physical processes. We have a mix of emotional, philosophical, social, and political problems, generally all of our own making. We excel at making problems, don’t we? Over the course of 200 to 300 thousand years of our existence as members of the animal kingdom, we seem to have generated problems at a rate faster than we have generated tools to solve them.
So, here’s a task to try your skills as an inventor. I want to see your late-night infomercial that sells your solution to those particularly human problems. I want to be so sold on your solution to life’s problems that I’ll order not one, but two—I am willing to pay the extra “handling charge” for your BOGO offer. No doubt, I’ll be pleased with my purchase, which, I believe, will, like some super flashlight cast brilliant light on my life, or, like some super sunglasses, allow me to see through life’s obfuscating glare. I hope you soon get a patent on your solution to life’s problems. I’m getting out the credit card right now.
*https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/pigs-caught-video-using-tools-first-time and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHfCkc8VCuI
See also my posting called “Pigcasso” (9/26/19).
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