2010/3/27 wren ng thornton
<wren@freegeek.org>
Alberto G. Corona wrote:
because math abilities are not a -primary- reason for survival.
Tools engineering and mastering is.
Do not be misled by the fact that CS departments are often lumped in with engineering. For that matter, do not be misled by modern engineering which bears little resemblance to any tool-using evolutionary advantage that may have molded homo sapiens.
You hace to take into account that everything we do anew is the product of a intellectual activity. It does not matter if the work is physical or not. Moreover, most of the thigs we things that we assume that we evolved with was in reallity modern. We did not evolved for them.
Taming a horse is good for survival, but we do not evolved for taming horses (this is only done a few milennia ago). Learning to driving a car is now good for survival, but we don´t evolved for that. even the invention of the arrow and the spear is relatively recent. We have no adaptations for programming, but we don´t have for desingning and building chairs or washing machines too. No matter if some are good for survival now or not.
What we evolved with is a general hability: to play with things to achieve what we need from them, (besides other abilities). The pleasure to acheve ends by using available means. This gives us pleasure from engineering, taming, desingning or building. The most part of the work in these activities are intelectual. We can not do new thigs without first having trough on them, no matter if this is to build a chair or winning a battle or creating a program.
A tool is someting used to solve a class of problems. It does not matter if it is something phisical or conceptual. A sword is a tool for a soldier. Logic is a tool for a philosopher. A programming language is psichologically speaking, the most powerful tool in can imagine. The more general is a tool, the more we feel pleasure playing with it
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Live well,
~wren