18th November, 2016
I feel extremely priviledged to be amongst
you today for this very special event in Pearl Academy. My association with
Pearl is about 10 years old now.
I was in design education for 24 years before
I joined Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in the City Palace. My address today will be to the students, especially the
graduating students.
I. Hands on, minds on
I would urge you to not just think but also
use your hands in doing things. Doing is a very important part of thinking
process. If you have an idea, don’t just live with it. My experience tells me
that ideas are random in nature. They need articulation. You have to articulate
them. To do so you have to do. Thinking and then doing leads to further
thinking and then further doing and so on……An idea is like a spark. It comes
and goes. Persuing an idea is like nurturing it. Einstein once said that there
are no big or small ideas. The idea becomes big or small depending on how much
it is pursued.
It is the process of doing that is very
interesting and it is here that the hands start playing an important part.
The human hand is a very special organ.
I have always wondered what it is that distinguishes human
being from an animal. We are always told that it is our ability to think that
distinguishes us. But don’t the animals think? They do also have brain and do
have the ability to think. There are two types of thinking that happens in the
brain; reflex thinking and conscious thinking. Reflex thinking happens very
fast, without our even knowing about it. We breath, we sleep, we feel hungry,
we eat, we drink, we digest and so on. These are essential function of the body
to remain alive. The brain keeps on giving commands to various organs of our
body to perform these functions. Conscious thinking comes into being only when
we think beyond those daily reflex functions. It is this conscious thinking
(reasoned thinking/logical thinking) that distinguishes us from other living
beings. We may call this intelligence. However, till date intellectuals have
not been able to define intelligence. But the big question is – How did this
intelligence come about in the human brain and where is it located?
At one time it was thought that we have intelligence because
we have a larger brain then all other living beings. But it has now been found
that Whales and Dolphins have larger brains than human beings. It has also been
found that there is no specific location of intelligence in the brain. It seems
to come into play when various part of the brain is active in a certain
coherence and sequence.
Our brain is an intricate loom of billions of neural
pathways with a huge potential for weaving internal interconnections and
connections out to the world. The name for a brain cell is “neuron” which
derives from ancient Greek roots for “fiber,” “thread,” or “cord.” It is
possible for us to create more and more of such neural pathways. But we have to
also realize that the brain that we have
today has evolved for many thousands of years.
According to genetic and fossil evidence, archaic Homo sapiens evolved to anatomically modern humans solely
in Africa, between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, with members of one branch
leaving Africa by 60,000 years ago and over time replacing earlier human
populations such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. The "Great Leap
Forward" leading to full behavioral
modernity sets in only after
rapidly increasing sophistication in tool-making and behaviour is apparent from
about 80,000 years ago, and the migration
out of Africa follows towards the
very end of the Middle
Paleolithic, some 60,000 years ago. Fully modern behaviour, including figurative art, music, self-ornamentation, trade, burial rites etc. is evident by 30,000 years ago.
Fossil discoveries of bipedal convince
anthropologists that walking upright came before big brains in the evolution of
humans. When homo sapien became upright and started walking on two legs his
hands got free from resting on the earth and
have become, down through the ages, the most marvellous instruments. Since then
the size of the brain started increasing rapidly. Hence one can conveniently
conclude that hands have been the single most factor in evolution of human
intelligence.
The shape of the hand
with its five delicate, mobile fingers surrounding the quiet center of the
palm, intimates its connection with the rays and impulses of the five-pointed
star, the pentagram. An organ of the sense of touch, it can be used to feel, to
grasp, to move, mold, intertwine, or to relate other objects to one another,
but also to make free gestures expressive of the inner dictates of the soul. Through
infinite variations of all these, it has become one of man's most creative and,
at the same time, selfless organs. Rudolf Steiner has spoken of the hands as
the eyes of the rhythmic system. And one who works much with his hands may well
feel how an essential part of his being would be blind without them.
Hands-on Learning
We always talk about hands-on learning. Neurophysiological
research increasingly confirms the wisdom and efficacy of “hands-on learning.”
Correlations have been found between dexterity and mobility in the fine motor
muscles of our hands and cellular development in our brain which supports our cognitive
capacities.
According to the Swedish neurophysiologist Matti Bergstrom:
The density of
nerve endings in our fingertips is enormous. Their discrimination is almost as
good as that of our eyes. If we don't use our fingers, if in childhood and
youth we become “fingerblind,” this rich network of nerves is
impoverished—which represents a huge loss to the brain and thwarts the
individual's all-around development. Such damage may be likened to blindness
itself or perhaps worse. Those who shaped our age-old traditions always
understood this. But today, an information-obsessed society that overvalues
science and undervalues true worth, has forgotten it all. We are
“value-damaged.” The philosophy of our upbringing is science-centered, and our
institutions are programmed toward that end. . ..These institutions have no
time for the creative potential of the nimble fingers and hand, and that
arrests the all-round development of our students — and of the whole community.
As our hands touch and play upon surfaces of outer reality,
we internalize and inwardly fabricate a personalized tapestry upon the
multi-dimensional loom of our mind. The richer and deeper these experiences
are, the more meaningful the world can potentially be for us. We come to
have the world in our minds, but first, we often have to have it actively in
our hands.
Grasping Objects, Words, and Thoughts
A primary vehicle for weaving the world “into our minds” is
the active engagement of our hands. The new-born and very young child has
billions of active neurons and passageways eagerly ready to meet reality with
incredible openness and selfless imitation. Even before the first smile comes
the active movement of the hands immediately grasping things and soon after
stretching out into the world. By the age of two weeks old, newborns already
will reach out to things put in front of them.
To start the wonderful process of neurophysiological
weaving, the hands first need to grasp and manipulate objects physically. The
baby grips the new world with incredible will and intensity. At around age one,
when the child achieves uprightness and begins to walk on its legs, a development
of similar significance is happening in the hands. They become manipulative organs
with fingers that are increasingly able to move independently. This also marks
the onset of the next stage of attaining speech in the second year of life. In
the first three years of life, the child is also intensively “grasping” and
manipulating sounds and words and miraculously absorbing language and complex
grammars. Out of his or her grasp of language arises the grasp of thoughts and
the first glimmerings of consciousness of self and ego.
Hand activity and grasping not only initially help establish
the awe-inspiring neural network of the mind in our very early years, but also
contribute to keeping it vibrant, flexible and active throughout our most
formative learning years.
Without regular, rhythmic, and active engagement of our hands, many neural
pathways would remain unused, underused, or would fail to receive the permanent
myelin sheathing they need around them for remembered and repeated action. They
would remain disordered and chaotic, atrophy, and wither away. Our minds would
be reduced to underdeveloped reflections of their true potential.
Joint Evolution of Hand and Brain
Intelligence has always been considered “cephalocentric”
(head-centered) in which the head receives all the credit for knowledge.
However, the truth is that the human being is a whole only when the brain and
hand and other aspects of our being collaborate and participate in each other’s
development.
The interaction of brain and hand,
and the growth of their collaborative relationship throughout a life of
successive relationships with all manner of other selves---musical, building, playing,
hiking, cooking, juggling, riding, artistic selves---not only signifies but
proves that what we call learning is a quintessential mystery of human life. .
.It marks the fusion of what is physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual
in us.
The brain keeps giving the hand
new things to do and new ways of doing what it already knows how to do. In
turn, the hand affords the brain new ways of approaching old tasks and the possibility
of undertaking and mastering new tasks. That means the brain, for its part, can
acquire new ways of representing and defining the world.
Somewhere
between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, the hand had reached its present
anatomic configuration, the brain had tripled in size, tools were more
elaborate, there was a complex society based on the organization of
relationships, alliances, ideas, and work, and we started calling our selves
Homo sapiens. . .. The modern human hand acquired] the ability to move the ring
and small fingers across the hand toward the thumb a movement which
is called u1nar opposition. Ulnar opposition is a prime example of a small
anatomic change with monumental consequences, because it greatly increased the
grasping potential and manipulative capacity of the hand. Ulnar opposition made
it possible for the thumb to powerfully hold an object obliquely against the
palm, as we hold a hammer, a tennis racquet, or a golf club, or as a violinist
holds the neck of the violin. This new grip has been called the oblique squeeze
grip, and it would have been a major advantage in close combat because in this
hand a club could be held tightly and swung on an extended arm axis through a
huge arc.
The trick of
ulnar opposition is unique to modern humans. . .an effect. . .can be seen in an
improved precision grip, in which small objects are manipulated between the
fingers without contacting the palm.
The ability of
the hand to conform to large spherical objects is due in part to the action of
small but powerful intrinsic muscles. . .that help to maintain its arch.
Since it does
not seem likely that the brain's remarkable capacity to control refined
movements of the hand would have predated the hand's biomechanical capacity to
carry out those movements, we are left with a rather startling but inescapable
conclusion: it was the biomechanics of the modern hand that set the stage for
the creation of neurologic machinery needed to support a host of behaviors
centered on the skilled use of the hand. If the hand did not literally build
the brain, it almost certainly provided the structural template around which an
ancient brain built both a new system for hand control and a new bodily domain
of experience, cognition, and imaginative life.
The brain does
not live inside the head, even though that is its formal habitat. It reaches
out to the body, and with the body it reaches out to the world. Brain is hand
and hand is brain.
Prominent 18th century German philosopher and
Aesthetician Emmanuel Kant said that the
hand was our outer brain.
If the hand and
brain learn to speak to each other intimately and harmoniously, something that humans
seem to prize greatly, which we call autonomy, begins to take shape.
Speech and Language
Hand has also been the instigator of human language.
There is the role of feeling and the heart with those of
hand and head. A delightful part of recent research involves qualitative case
studies of individuals who use their hands in a variety of special ways:
jugglers, surgeons, musicians, puppeteers, car mechanics, engineers, rock
climbers and so on.
In design we believe that we work for a
better tomorrow. But is that happening?
Case of TV development
It is frightening to realize that
Design-technology is making us lazy, minimizing the role of hand. Today we seem
to use our hand only to press buttons or keys on the keyboard. This will, I
feel have serious consequences on our ability to think and the future evolution
of our hand.
II. Be yourself
I would also urge you to do what you want to
do and be yourself in all that you do.
Picasso once said:
“I decided to be an artist
and I became Pablo Picasso”
An amazing surprise choice this year for
Nobel Prize in Literature is Bob Dylan, an iconic American Pop Song writer
Musician. He has written and sung iconic songs like:
Times They are A-Changing….
He always preferred to be himself. He has
said:
All I can be is me – whoever
that is
About success and failure he said:
If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail;
if you are not true to your heart, you will fail. Then again there is no
success like failure.
About money he said:
What’s money? A man is a
success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between
does what he wants to do.
About reputation, he said:
Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself
crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.
When one of the great legendry teachers of
India (probably the one whom I admire most), Gautam Buddha, was on his death
bed, his closest pupil Ananda, with tears in his eyes, asked him if there any
last teaching for him. Buddha smiled and said:
APPO DEEPO BHAVA
My
advise to the fresh graduates; I repeat Buddha’s advice
APPO DEEPO BHAVA
Thank you for hearing me so patiently. And thank you
for inviting me this afternoon. Wish all of you the very best in future life.
(this is the full transcript of my prepared address.
However, I had to cut it down in my actual address as it was way too long.)
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