What is the culture of tools?

With regard to education, Brian Redhead (1986) narrating for the RSA² stated:

"Although industry gave us an Empire and made Britain for a while the most powerful nation on earth, we took the rewards while disparaging the means. … We even devised an education system which chose not only to ignore industry but to steer its ablest pupils well away from it. This cultural disparagement of industry, this snobbery, is the root cause of Britain's industrial decline. It is a failure to take industry seriously. …"

The culture of tools refers to the creative activity pursued by humankind to make tools in order to enhance productivity and capability for the purposes of survival. These skills have allowed us to evolve more comfortable ways of living, progressing to the way we now live. The early 'life-style' our forebears experienced is so far removed from the way we live today, it becomes difficult to comprehend any link.

However, for the informed witness there is a powerful conceptual link through our tool-culture. As the evolution of humankind unfolded, the creative thinkers were able to visualise how tools could be made from the available materials, and used to enhance productivity and capability in the interests of survival.

Our tool-culture goes back to before our Stone Age ancestors. For example a wooden spear made from a Yew tree found at Clacton-on-Sea was 'estimated to be three hundred thousand years old'—Shick & Toth¹ (1995:271).

But every ethnic society has its own tool-culture influenced by the available materials and the quality of creative thinking in the use of those materials; this is explained in the thesis.

For the UK, what was significant in the evolution of our tool-culture was the discovery and use of iron. This discovery was used by creative thinkers to further enhance productivity and capability. But technology at the leading edge never stands still, and eventually precision technology was discovered leading to the design and development of electricity generation and supply systems.

We only miss electricity when it is not there at the flick of a switch. Few have any concept of how electricity generation and supply systems function, and fewer still would be able to identify the conceptual presence of our tool-culture; unfortunately that includes a great number in education.

Dr Stan Owers February 2003

¹ Schick K and Toth N, Making Silent Stones Speak, 1st ed. 1993, this ed. 1995, Phoenix, London.

² Thanks to Industry, 1986, Video produced for The Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.