Between semesters studying theories of Education and Cognitive abilities, I have picked up the book: “The Most Powerful Idea in the World” by William Rosen. This book is a natural history of invention, but specifically a history of how a functional steam engine came into existence, when it did, and how it did. Truly, a bit of history from the beginning of the industrial revolution that we in the midst of the technological revolution should really pay attention to.   

William Rosen is an engaging author and for me a welcome relief from the exceptionally poor writing exhibited by authors of educational theory. It really is remarkable how quickly the text flows and can be enjoyed when the writing is good and the enthusiasm of the author for their subject is unburdened by academic scholarship. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Rosen does not dismiss scholarship, his text is well founded in historical fact and his notes with bibliography are extensive. What makes it remarkable is that he is able to capture a holistic view of all the divergent elements, which came into play to bring invention into the modern age.

Why have I (as a metalsmith) found the motivation to write about this book on my blog? The few paragraphs in chapter 2, which I will transcribe here are as elegant an argument for the honor of working hands and the value of handmade as I have ever encountered.

“For centuries, certainly ever since Immanuel Kant called the hand ‘the window on the mind,’ philosophers have been pondering the very complex way in which the human hand is related to the human mind. Modern neuroscience and evolutionary biology have confirmed the existence of what the Scottish physician and theologian Charles Bell called ‘the intelligent hand.’ Stephen Pinker of Harvard even argues that early humans’ intelligence increased ‘party because they were equipped with levers of influence on the world, namely the grippers found at the end of their two arms.’

We now know that the literally incredible amounts of sensitivity and articulation of the human hand, which has increased at roughly the same pace as has the complexity of the human brain, is not merely a product of the pressures of natural selection, but an initiator of it: The hand has led the brain to evolve just as much as the brain has led the hand. The Hands of a pianist, or a painter, or a sushi chef, or even, as with Thomas Newcomen [a metalsmith and builder of the first functional steam engine], hands that could use a hammer to shape soft iron, are truly, in any functional sense, ‘intelligent.”

This sort of “tactile intelligence” is further explained and identified as a crucial part of the history of invention in Rosen’s text. Tactile intelligence is what makes critical revisions to the theoretical designs of products. The tactile intelligence Rosen refers to is the working knowledge craftsmen have developed over years of training with the manual manipulation of materials. This is the linch-pin for the industrial revolution and the modern world that followed. The “intelligent hand,” which Mr. Rosen identifies so eloquently in his book “The Most Powerful Idea in the World” is what has me enamored.