Frank Wilson’s work as a neurologist and the medical director of a Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of Californian School of Medicine has certainly provided him with a wealth of fascinating background and real life human research for this fascinating book on the evolutionary and revolutionary role of the hand in human development. He gently guides us, knuckle by knuckle, across the ages from our ancestral manipulation of early tools through to the modern age of the computer revolution. While Wilson himself admits that his primary thesis is not a novel one as he himself pays homage to the work of Sir Charles Bell (published in 1833) and John Russel Napier (a founder of modern primatology) I found the book to be extremely stimulating in a variety of ways.

First there is Wilson’s very careful exposition of the arm and hand that we brought down from the trees and his emphasis on the new neural physics that would have had to develop as a way of registering and representing the behaviour of objects moving and changing under the control of the hand. He agues that it is precisely such a representational system-a syntax of cause and effect, of stories and experiments, that one finds at the deepest levels of the organisation of human language. In fact, it is declared, the hand speaks to the brain just as surely as the brain speaks to the hand. As he argues his case for proper respect to be paid to the whole hand in its entirety, not just the opposing thumb, throughout the eons, as part of Homo Hablis, Erectus and Sapiens, he arrives at the modern child faced in front of an electronic screen. His concern oozes from the pages as he pleads and wonders out loud what will become of this screen interactive child, who for the first time in a good long while is channelling all his talents through one small cognitive-hand movement. He prescribes an open education system where basically unconditional positive encouragement is given to all of a young child’s developing skills so that we as a species can continue on our evolutionary path.

Before we are taken to this final obvious, but perhaps needed to be, conclusion we are taken through a book filled with fascinating characters with an array of talented hands, We meet the Director of the Dusseldorf Marionette Theatre, Bachleitner then Percelly the juggler, David Hall the rock climber, George the jewellery maker, Jack Schafer the mechanic, Patrick O’Brien the musician, Reed Hearon the restaurateur, Anat the Feldenkrais therapist and Dr Aldo the surgeon and magician. Through these fascinating interviews and monologues of these talented virtuosos we are brought to awe and a deep appreciation of the human hand and its capacities and incredible wide range of action. It establishes his thesis of "hand knowledge" being indeed a force to be listened to and reckoned with in the overly verbal/ "head orientated" world.

I also particularly enjoyed Wilson’s many informative footnotes which added to the reading of the sometimes difficult main text. I think a wide range of readers will find this text informative, surely those interested in education and human potential, but also those who are interested in furthering their appreciation of, as Sir Bell said, the manifestation of "the hand, its mechanism and vital endowments as evincing design"


Prem Dana Takada, Clinical Psychologist, Tokyo

Categories: General