Your Brain On Paper

Matthew Crawford (The World Beyond Your Head) observes that we can do simple mathematics in our heads. We can even multiply bigger numbers by breaking them down into smaller ones. At some point, though, most of us lost track: “If one has to multiply 356 by 911, the number of items to juggle becomes quite challenging, so what do we do? We reach for a pencil and paper.”

Pencil and paper allows us to “vastly extend our intellectual capacities: long division, algebra, calculating the load on a structural member, building space shuttles, and all the rest. The reader may have had the experience of being unable to think without a pen in hand, or a laptop open. A number of “metaphors have been suggested: we ‘offload’ some of our thinking onto our surroundings, or we incorporate objects in such a way that they come to act like prosthetics. The point is that to understand human cognition, it is a mistake to focus only on what goes on inside the skull, because our abilities are highly ‘scaffolded by environmental props—by technologies and cultural practices, which become an integral part of our cognitive system.”

Another bit of evidence, obvious evidence, against a clean subject/object, mind/body, mind/world distinction.