AOK

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to resemble nails” (Abraham Maslow). As a species the human race excels at using our tools to solve any problem that arises. From basic survival to the intricate technology-based society the economy revolves around. So, what tools do people use to change the world around them? Our ways of knowing, memory, reason, and emotion are used as tools in order to solve problems can help us adapt to our condition, support our success in specific areas of knowledge, or be the means of our own destruction.

What is a tool? It is likely that people will say, an object that does a task like how hammer can nail a nail into wood. In addition, a tool must be sharp and precise in order to be useful. While this is true, most people do not consider a tool to be intangible. Going back long before the dawn of civilization the first tools were intangible. These tools were our ways of knowing. For instance, people needed to see if they were to survive. These ways of knowing solved a problem. For instance Neanderthals adapted, overtime through natural selection, emotion because it was better survive in a group than alone. Like most tools these ways of knowing can often solve a multitude of problems, but are subject to limitations. For instance, you would not use a hammer to cut a piece of wood the way you would not see an orchestra play a Mozart.

Some tools can preform a specific task and some can preform a wide variety of tasks. For instance, a hammer can nail a nail into wood or it can remove that same nail from that piece of wood. Like tangible tools, intangible tools like Ways of Knowing can do the same. For instance, take the sonar kid. He tragically lost his sight at a young age. Despit...

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...as allowed all problems to be solved. Even if those problems do not resemble nails. Talking about our Ares of knowledge as a whole, when we see a problem we attack that problem with every area of knowledge in order to nail in the hammer. So when the only tool we have is a hammer all problems resemble nails because there is only one way of knowing needed to solve that problem, or we have the tools necessary to solve the problem. When enough ways of knowing are refined it either sets people up to fail or to succeed. Yet, what happens if we encounter a major problem that we do not have the tools for? For example, what sense gives us the ability to see in the fourth dimension? Of course we do not have a need for this sense, but what if we did? What would people do? Would we adapt other tools, use the tools we have today, or would we fail to perceive the world around us?