For Professor Fathie's Credentials Please click Here

Biological & Mechanical Tools: Thoughts on a New Paradigm

Anthropologists often remark that one of the most distinguishing characteristics of human evolution was tool creation and use. From the earliest Stone Age tools that date back at least 2 million years to the overwhelming varieties of high technology that envelop us today, it can be said that through tool invention and use, our ancestors radically modified the world and, in turn, themselves.

Though it was formerly presumed, rather unfairly, that humans were the lone tool-users in the animal kingdom, more recent evidence proves that tool use exists to some degree or another among a wide variety of species. The extent to which an animal is categorized as a tool-user rests largely on the definition of the term 'tool' itself. A domestic house-cat that jumps adroitly from the floor to your new sofa and proceeds to claw its way to the top of your new curtains cannot be said to have used this, in the strictest sense of the definition, even though without taught muscles and a set of sharp, gripping claws, the mischievous animal would remain grounded. By contrast, a chimpanzee that strips a twig bare of its branches, dips it gingerly into an ant hole, and withdraws and licks clean a skewer of tasty ants, has, by many anthropologists' standards, devised and successfully made use of a tool.

In this light we might view our own tool use as the single most important factor that has catapulted us, exponentially, into the future we now embrace. The opposable thumb and increases in cranial dimension, too deserve credit , as does the change from quadruped to biped. To attempt to delineate the process from a cause and effect standpoint is the true stuff of anthropology, which is, very possibly, why anthropologists keep digging away, not necessarily to determine what came first in this chicken/egg enigma but how one factor influenced the other.

Origins aside, a comparison of "natural' and "man-made" tools brings to light some curiously intriguing insights. As author Steven Vogel writes in his new book Cat's Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People, "Nature's technology is typically tiny, wet, nonmetallic, nonwheeled, and flexible, whereas human technology is mainly the opposite: large, dry, metallic, wheeled and stiff." Some may interpret the comparison as value laden, though upon closer examination, the opportunity to reflect on the origins of the difference proves more appealing and pragmatic.

The biological world relies so exclusively on water and other viscous elements as the essential building blocks of any mechanical system, that to imagine things any differently seems impossible. Yet, paradoxically, that is exactly what humans have done with their environment They have imagined and created a mechanical tool set which rests more profoundly on the tenets of physics than those of biology. Though our intellect is essentially biological, its creations are physical. Only through reproduction do we ever produce a result with the complexity that biology entails, and for that we can take little credit since our role in the process is largely passive after the initial, and instinct- driven, act of intercourse, which in many unfortunate cases, doesn't live up to its biological potential for flexible interaction due to the acquired meddlesome influence of .. our intellect.

What must be asked, and what remains a true mystery, is whether the physical nature of things might yield one day to the biological. Can we ever achieve a mechanical paradigm did rests on the principles of biology, or are we hardwired to create non-biological mechanics?

T'he question is pertinent to physicians, who constantly straddle the gap between the patient, a purely biological entity, and the cure, which may or may not be. In the case of blood transfusions or organ transplants, our mechanical inventions yield phenomenal results. They serve as the go-between for a profound biological connection. In the case of joint hip or bone replacement the physical and non- biological replaces the innately biological. From a performance standpoint there are costs and risks.

But even on a more subtle level, physicians must constantly remind themselves that the inorganic tools they use are, fundamentally alien to the body, and not always prone to successful interface. Moreover, patients' reactions to the often cold and metallic medical tools can have a profund psychological impact. Much like Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankstein, we look upon our own creation with a combination of admiration and dread.

In the end, science will doubtedly find more organic solutions to organic problems.  For those tasks that are not organic, a little WD-40 might continue to be just the cure-as long as it doesn't end up in the water supply. For therein lies the ultimate question-do the ends justify the tools? If we answer that question in the negative, we then must ask ourselves whether our intellect, which after all the devised tools we come to question, can rise to the challenge of building a new, more biologically amenable tool set that is equal to or more effective than the older one? It is a question some might say is better left to evolution, but then again, if we can ask it, we might just be able to answer it-in the affirmative.

---