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Thinking with the Fingers

It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a ‘mental activity.’ We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, p. 6

I found this passage interesting because it ties into Polanyi’s idea of ‘indwelling.’

There is an odd dualism that runs through much of the modern ‘scientific’ thought I’ve encountered that portrays the brain and body as strangely at odds. For example, the idea that one must have a ‘fully functioning’ brain in order to have a meaningful existence. The oddness of such a view is particularly striking because this viewpoint is held by the very same people who would maintain that thinking itself is really only a physical process. I will go no farther with that line of thought.

I do not see how anyone can dispute the fact that we think with more than the brain. Philosophers will continue their debates over the nature of the mind as an entity, wholly the same as, or different from, the brain; but at least this much is clear: we think with our fingers and mouths as much as we silently contemplate conundrums in the ‘pure mind.’

Just this past Lord’s Day, as I was preaching on Judges 9, I found myself learning new things about the text as I preached. I was not deliberately engaged in a silent chain of reasoning. I was thinking with my mouth. As I spoke, so I learned. This happens fairly regularly. And now, as I type, it is debatable whether the words form in my mind or in my fingertips, as I do not consciously decide to write before the words appear before me and I become a spectator of them.

Perhaps the modern thinkers do not emphasize the physicality of the mind too much; Perhaps they emphasize it to little. The Word becoming flesh matters.

Indwelling: The Presuppositional Air We Breathe

When we accept a certain set of pre-suppositions and use them as our interpretative framework, we may be said to dwell in them as we do in our body…They are not asserted and cannot be asserted, for assertion can be made only within a framework with which we have identified ourselves for the time being; as they are themselves our ultimate framework, they are essentially inarticulable.

– Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, p. 60

A parable:

A crab walks into a bar the ocean and says to a fish, ‘Dude, you should really get out of the water sometime; it would be good for your complexion.’

‘Huh?’ said the fish.

The crab responded to the perplexity of the fish: ‘Seriously bro, you stay wet all the time; you need to soak up some sun.’

‘Blub, blub,’ said the fish, and then he began his soliloquy: ‘Crab, I have no idea what you’re talking about; I’m not wet, I don’t even know what wet is.’

‘Are you serious bro?’ replied the crab…

I could go on, but I won’t. (A while back I wrote a POEM that tries to express the same point) The point is simple: For the fish, the water becomes and extension of himself; it is his atmosphere, his ecosystem. Human minds have ecosystems as well; I suppose you could call them ego-systems. In order for a radical conversion of thought to take place, the fish (yes, back to the fish) must see, 1) that there is such a thing as water, 2) that he lives in it, 3) that the fact that he lives in it has major ramifications, and 4) that there is a possible alternative that might suit reality better.

This won’t work for a fish because water is the only environment that suits its purpose – unless of course the fish is a mermaid, like Ariel, and realizes that the seaweed is greener in another world. Come to think of it, the Little Mermaid had an epistemological crisis of the sort we’re driving at here: she saw a more suitable alternative that fulfilled her deepest longings. But, alas, we have digressed from a brilliant chemist and philosopher to a lame parable to the Little Mermaid; by all means, let’s wrap this up.

Our basic presuppositions are the air that we breathe. In order for someone to abandon them they must be made aware that they exist, see there faults demonstrated, and see that there is another, and more suitable, alternative. You won’t get the fish out of the water, in this case, by jumping in yourself. The task is to get the fish out, not to get yourself in. If you do jump in the water, it must be for the purpose of blowing up the lake (metaphorically speaking of course) so that others will come running out with you.

Michael Polanyi: Subsidiary and Focal Awareness, Indwelling

I will not comment on these quotes at the moment. I only record them for reference. Each is from Personal Knowledge, by Michael Polanyi.

When we use a hammer to drive in a nail, we attend to both nail and hammer, but in a different way. We watch the effect of our strokes on the nail and try to wield the hammer so as to hit the nail most effectively. When we bring down the hammer we do not feel that its handle has struck our palm but that its head has struck the nail. Yet in a sense we are certainly alert to the feelings in our palm and the fingers that hold the hammer. They guide us in handling it effectively, and the degree of attention that we give to the nail is given to the same extent but in a different way to those feelings. The difference may be stated by saying that the latter are not, like the nail, objects of our attention, but instruments of it. They are not watched in themselves; we watch something else while keeping intensely aware of them. I have a subsidiary awareness of the feeling in the palm of my hand which is merged into a focal awareness of my driving the nail (p. 55).

He continues,

Subsidiary and focal awareness are mutually exclusive. If a pianist shifts his attention from the piece he is playing to the observation of what the is doing with his fingers while playing it, he gets confused and may have to stop. This happens generally if we switch our focal attention to particulars of which we had previously been aware only in in their subsidiary role (p. 56).

And he adds,

Our subsidiary awareness of tools and probes can be regarded now as the act of making them form a part of our own body…We pour ourselves out into them and assimilate them as parts of our own existence. We accept them existentially by dwelling in them (p. 59).

Information: Data vs In-Forming

Wendell Berry gives us a little gem about the meaning of the word ‘information’:

‘Information,’ which once meant that which forms or fashions from within, now means merely ‘data.’ However organized this data may be, it is not shapely or formal or in the true sense in-forming. It is not present where it is needed; if you have to ‘access’ it, you don’t have it. Whereas knowledge moves and forms acts, information is inert. You cannot imagine a debater or a quarterback or a musician performing by ‘accessing information.’ A computer chock full of such information is no more admirable than a head or a book chock full of it.

– Another Turn of the Crank, p. 96

Getting knowledge, storing and accessing data, simply won’t do it. There is information in the form of data, and there is information that truly forms a person inwardly. Which are you primarily seeking after?

What we often do not realize is that the entertainment culture around us is often what is truly informing us. Movies are catechisms, stories are catechisms, they are forming our impulses, shaping the way that we look at the world.

While this is the case, in school we often find ourselves simply storing and regurgitating data. This might be a good thing when it comes to bad schools, but it’s not a good thing in general. The ability to regurgitate data does not equate to true knowledge.

The Bible, and the book of Proverbs, in particular, calls us to seek both knowledge and wisdom. Both belong to God: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33). God is rich in knowledge. He has all the data. He knows all the facts. He is omniscient. But he is also rich in wisdom. He is able to take those facts and form them into a coherent whole. He can make sense of the facts in the most practical details.

Being truly informed is to have knowledge and wisdom come together in such a way that they shape you from the inside. And since Christ is the Word (the Logos), the Reason, the Logic of God and the Wisdom of God, the One who makes it all make sense in the nuts and bolts of existence, you will never be informed until He dwells in you. You might be a data collector, and even a data regurgitator. You might take on the shape of your favorite pop star or fictional series, but you will never know the glory of being truly formed from within toward God – Christ in you, the hope of glory.

  • Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me (John 15:4).