Discovery and Invention: A Comparative Study of Civilizations

By Charles T. Stewart Jr.

The history of humanity can be written in terms of discovery and invention. They are very different cognitive processes—search for order and problem solving.

This book is a search for explanation of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. It surveys seven civilizations in terms of both their achievements and their failures. What were the characteristics they shared that promoted progress? What prevented or discouraged progress in discovery and or in invention?

Sumer was creative, the mother of civilizations. Egypt was not. In Sumer, authority was divided, and it was a trading economy. Egypt was authoritarian and closed. Rome and Islam inherited the Greek legacy. Rome was not interested; it had a different agenda. Islam progressed, but civilization conflicted with religion and then regressed. China led in inventions but then stagnated and always lagged in discovery. Its ultimate failure has multiple explanations that include the scope of authority, structure of society and economy, and of language and script. But so was its preference for intuition over logic or evidence as the method of seeking the truth.

It is Greek capacity for abstraction origin a mystery that was essential for its achievements: discoveries of the structure of the universe and the cognitive approach to truth seeking. Much invention was a byproduct of discovery. It is Greek achievements in discovery and abstract reasoning that Europe adopted and advanced, leading to the scientific and subsequent industrial revolutions. Ours is a new phase in human history. What were some of its consequences, and what are its prospects?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796038811

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Copyright © 2019 by Charles T. Stewart, Jr.

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Rev. date: 08/12/2019

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

I.       INTRODUCTION

Discovery

Invention

Innovation

Summary

II.     ORIGINS OF DISCOVERY AND INVENTION AMONG ANIMALS

Learning: Cognitive Versus Genetic

Tool-Using and Toolmaking Behavior

Animal Invention

Communication

Cognitive Ability

Abstraction

Other Indicators of Cognition and Creativity

Brains

Conclusion

III.    PREHISTORY: HOMINIDS AND HOMO

Creativity and Survival

The Stone Age

Fire

Language and Speech

Neolithic Industrial Revolution

Art, Religion, and Abstraction

Agriculture

Why Agriculture?

Agriculture and Civilization

Human Evolution: Genes, Environment, or Culture?

Is There Structure in Technological Progress?

IV.     THE BEGINNING OF HISTORY

From Agriculture To Writing

Amnesia

Writing

Memory

Scripts

Cognition

Language Structure and Cognition

Origins of Writing

Numbers

The First Civilizations

Sumer and Mesopotamia

Numbers

Writing

Property and Power

Invention

Enterprise

Culture

Egypt

The State

Writing and Invention

Sumer Versus Egypt

Western Hemisphere

Discovery and Invention in the Americas

Indus and China

V.      GREECE AND THE CULTURE OF REASON

Introduction

Abstraction

The Natural World

Cosmology

Space

Time

Number

Reasoning and Logic

Taxonomy

On The Origins of Abstract Thinking

Invention and Experiment

The Inventors and Discoverers

The Inventions

Theory and Application

Explanations: Why The Greeks?

Geography and Economy

Law and Politics

Adversarial Culture

The Alphabet

Language

The Decline

Summary and Conclusion

VI.     CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE

Introduction

Culture

Philosophies

Confucius and Confucianism

Society

Religion

Regression

Grandiosity

Isolation

The State

Authority

Bureaucracy

Law

Regulation

Change without Direction

Cosmology

Yin-Yang and The Five Elements

Cosmic Bureaucracy

Feng Shui

Space and Time

Number and Numerology

Taxonomy and Order

Cognition

Evidence, Logic, and Authority

Contradiction

Harmony Versus Truth

Reasoning

Analogy

Logic

Intuition

Cognitive Transfer

Discovery and Invention

Secrecy

Inventors and Discoverers

Inventions

Trajectories and Transfers

Discovery

Mo-Tzu and The Mohists

Explanations

Myths of Origin

Script, Language, and Reasoning

Structure and Sequence

Conclusion

VII.   ROME, ISLAM, AND THE GREEK LEGACY

Rome

Authority and the State

Culture

Invention

Islam

Religion or Civilization?

Civilization

Creative Minority

Accomplishments

Inventions

The State

Religion

Cosmology

Cognition

Why Islam Failed

Civilization and Culture—A Rear View

Myths of Origin and Destination

VIII. THE EUROPE THAT COULD

Introduction: Why Europe?

Christianity

The Religion

Christianity and the State

Christianity’s Early History

The Church

The Institution

Authority

Law and Morality

Early Scientific Revolution

Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton

Early Industrial Revolution

Age of Discovery

Culture Change

Expectation

Time

Progress

Why England?

Industrial Revolution

The Computer

The Three Revolutions

Agriculture

Health

Discovery and Invention: The Sine Qua Non

Futurism

The Age of Unintended Consequences

Work and Leisure

Population

The End of The Industrial Revolution

Limits

Demand

Evolution of Research

Interdependence

Complexity and Scale

Cost and Funding

End of Progress in Science and Technology?

PREFACE

The origins of this book go back a long time. In 1963–65, I directed a study for the National Science Foundation of the locational requirements for scientists and engineers conducting research. After a final report, I felt dissatisfied; the question I had tried to answer struck me as superficial. A location near a university strong in science and engineering was obvious. The needs of a highly educated, well-paid, and mobile professional labor force for an environment offering a wealth of cultural and educational opportunities were also obvious. It was no mystery that Silicon Valley was near Stanford University and San Francisco. This was the time of the Cold War, the race to the moon, growing federal expenditures on research and development. The universities were still graduating many majors in science, math, and engineering, and their numbers were supplemented by a huge brain drain from Europe.

Today I ask a different question—what are the conditions under which more of our best minds choose careers in science, math, and engineering? I have tried to answer it in part in my book The Decline of Learning in America, but the concern over their supply raises a more fundamental question: what are the characteristics of a society that produces scientists and engineers and promotes research, discovery, and invention—a creative society?

The simple tools made and used by early humans bear little comparison with the advanced technology on which we rely for survival and sustenance. The development of science and technology has been made possible by an evolution of mind capable of conceiving, constructing, and employing them. Many of us are as different from our early ancestors as our tools and knowledge are from theirs. I have focused on the characteristics of diverse civilizations that have promoted or have deterred discovery and invention. My purpose is not to describe but to explain why discovery did not happen and why invention has lagged in most civilizations in order to understand the exceptionalism of Greece and the dominance of the West in scientific discovery and invention.

The question addressed at the end of this book is whether the revolution in science and technology of the past two centuries opens a new stage of civilization, no longer subject to decline and fall or open to external threats, now a world civilization driven by science and technology, incorporating the seeds of its own evolution. Is it the servant of culture or its master?

I have benefited from discussions with and writings of more people than I can remember, including students in a seminar on the economics of science and technical change at the George Washington University. In particular, I appreciate the support of Jacob Perlman, Zola Bronson, and Theodore Suranyi-Unger of the National Science Foundation in my initial research. In writing this book, I have benefited from discussions with many more, in particular Bryan Boulier, Martha Rashid, Richard Schlagel, David Schalk, David Stewart, and members of the informal seniors’ discussion group at Sangamore Road, Bethesda, MD. In dealing with such a complex subject, I keep in mind the advice of Walter Buckingham, who told me that he agreed with himself only 90 percent of the time.

I

Introduction

The story of evolution and the history of civilization can be written in terms of discoveries and inventions, from shrugs and grunts to language, writing, and the Internet; from rafts and beasts of burden to the wheeled vehicle, steam locomotive, motor vehicle, and jet plane; from open fire to the blast furnace and microwave oven; from windmill and waterpower to steam engine to nuclear power; from wooden club to steel sword to nuclear bomb; from hunting and gathering to farming to the supermarket; from bone flutes to symphony orchestras. One could go on. How we live, what we do, and how we think are largely by-products of discovery and invention. Some inventions have changed our way of life; others have changed our way of thinking. The human mind is a cultural product as well as the agent of change. Our future depends on what we have yet to understand and learn to do.

In reviewing the history of discovery and invention, our purpose is to identify the conditions favoring and hindering their progress. These include the influence of discovery and invention on the conditions for their own acceleration, in particular their effects on human minds. In the short historical period since the invention of writing, we examine the differences between leading and lagging cultures and civilizations, seeking explanations for Greek protoscientific achievement and its absence in China, for the failure in Rome and Islam, and in recent centuries for the dominance of Europe and North America. Looking toward the future, what can we learn from the experience of the last millennium to maintain momentum for the next, and what limits or barriers do we face in promoting discovery, invention, and innovation in the century ahead?

We must distinguish between discovering and inventing, which are quite different in their cognitive requirements. Invention is the creation of something for the first time. Discovery is not creation but understanding. Invention and innovation are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct processes. Innovation is the spread, the adoption of an invention or discovery.

DISCOVERY

Numerous animals invent. Their inventions may be simple objects and techniques, but they solve problems that animals face. But animals do not discover. Discovery, as the term is used in this book, refers to an achievement that is beyond the reach of animals and rare in early human cultures. Discovery can have different meanings. It is important to clarify the sense in which this term will be used. One meaning of the word is to find. Animals find food, water, shelter, and so on. They do so by observation.

The ability to detect the superficial characteristics of material objects and living things is observation of fact. But discovery can also refer to concepts and ideas. The process of discovery, in this case, is not observation; it is search, detection, or creation of order in what appears to be a chaotic world. The purpose of discovery is understanding; its product is knowledge and explanation. This star moves in the sky is an observation; this star follows an orbit around the sun is a discovery.

The Age of Discovery is associated with Prince Henry the Navigator and Christopher Columbus. I refer to a different age, the Scientific Revolution, associated with Galileo and Newton. The first is geographic, a response to questions such as where and when? The second is cosmological, a response to questions such as why? It is explanation. The patterns we conceive, the orbits, are abstractions.

Discovery is learning for the first time. Every human being discovers many things as he advances in years, but these are discoveries only for the individuals, not for the society or the species. Often the first discovery is ignored or forgotten, and only a later rediscovery is propagated and remembered.

The subject of discovery in recent centuries has focused on scientific discovery and specifically on the decipherment of the laws of nature, on generalities rather than on specificities. It has become abstract, theoretical, mathematical. The Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that it empowered now dominates our lives.

In many cases, discovery is progress toward understanding reality but not yet there, just an approximation of the real world. The atom was first conceptualized by Democritus, demonstrated to exist more than two millennia later. The concept itself has changed considerably since Democritus. The Niels Bohr model is quite different and the current model still more different. One might say that Newton did not discover the laws of gravity, aided by millennia of observation. Einstein showed that Newton’s theory is not an exact replica of reality, just a close approximation. These discoveries are more like a stepladder than a pole vault.

These are discoveries in the natural world. There is another domain of discovery, the mind. On a mundane level, there is a vast warehouse to run. I do not know its contents or where or what is shelved, which is overstock that needs ordering. I must classify each item for storage and retrieval. It is a messy process full of detours, dead ends, and occasional flashes of insight that may have no end. There is no best system. There is no order to be discovered; it must be created. How to increase the mental resources for creativity? What knowledge should be accumulated? How to acquire the ability to identify and retrieve knowledge relevant to particular needs? The Dewey decimal system of the mind is always changing; there is no best classification.

INVENTION

Invention, as the term is used in this book, is a solution to a problem as perceived or conceived by the inventor. The product of invention is an object or process. (There are many inventions or solutions in search for suitable problems as well.) The object need not be concrete, in the conventional sense of visual, palpable objects. Just as there are discoveries in the domain of the mind, not nature, there are inventions as well that are ideas, not objects. Language is the greatest invention; writing is another. So is a symphony orchestra. Its music may be written or may be heard. Instruments are needed to write, to play, but they do not embody the idea; they merely communicate it. The invention is the concept, the idea; the object or procedure is its implementation, its embodiment. Inventions, like discoveries, are a continuing process as better solutions, or a better understanding of the problem, are conceived.

The word invent has many meanings. People are inventing all the time—how to explain a faux pas, to improve a stew, to remember appointments. How to distinguish a daily activity from inventions? First, the invention has to be new to the community, if not the species. A particular invention can be made multiple times, in different communities. Simultaneous inventions have become common as global communication promotes knowledge sharing and common goals. Second, an invention must be generic in some sense; it is not just a response to a specific event by a specific person. Inventions must be shared. Some of the drawings in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks do not qualify as inventions since they were not implemented, no one knew about them, and they had no consequences. They are biography, not history.

What of the alternative use of the term to signify a fiction or falsehood? This meaning of inventing as fabrication, falsehood, or fiction was first noted in literature five hundred years ago according to the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. It reflects something of a negative reaction to change and novelty widespread in the past and not uncommon even today.

The greatest inventions, language and writing, are social, the product of countless inventors. They cannot be monopolized but must be shared. Mathematics, like language, consists of a large number of inventions. Both are disembodied processes. Some of the most important inventions are social—organizations and processes for collective decision-making or for cooperative effort, legal systems, and elections.

One must distinguish between invention, the noun and the result, and invent, the verb and the process. The inventor has a goal in mind, and inventing is the process of achieving that goal. But many inventions are accidental—a new use is discovered for an existing object, such as a sharp stone or a piece of charcoal. Such inventions may be accidental rather than intentional. I suspect that most inventions by animals, hominids, and even early humans were of this nature—serendipitous discoveries. What distinguishes them from discoveries is that the invention was discovered rather than invented. The function of the invention is inferred ex post, a solution in search of a problem.

Invention may be classified along a continuum between two polar extremes, discovery and invention proper. The discovery is often fortuitous, accidental. The finding that the cinchona bark is effective against malaria is just a discovery; quinine is the resulting invention. Another characteristic of discoveries is that, even today, they do not always require a scientific base or dedicated effort—they could be made at any time. The curative powers of bread mold could have been discovered two thousand years ago; in fact, it was discovered who knows how many times well before Fleming.

The invention is the outcome of a goal-directed process. What is possible, even what is likely, depends on the current state of science and technology. The timing of some inventions, and some discoveries, is important in terms of their consequences.

Invention is problem-solving behavior. Discovery, by contrast, is a search for order in a chaotic world. These are quite different cognitive processes. It should not be expected that relevant behavior fits precisely into one or the other category. Some inventions—an increasing share—may require discovery, or the process of invention may result in discovery as a by-product. And discovery relies increasingly on invention and opens up new possibilities for it. The fundamental difference between the two is that there may be multiple solutions to a problem, but there are no alternative realities. The Pythagorean theorem is a discovery; there is no alternative relation between the hypotenuse and other sides of a right triangle. The decimal system is an invention. Other systems have been invented and are in use.

INNOVATION

Innovation is the dissemination of something new, potentially an invention. In recent times, the gap between invention and its utilization has widened. Edison did not manufacture electric light bulbs; he only invented them and made prototypes. Ford did not invent the automobile, but he did put it on the road. Many inventions are never put to use; knowledge about them is not disseminated, or they are too costly, dangerous, or not of interest to the society in which they are made. Innovation often involves some invention not just of processes for production but also of uses that have not been conceived of by the inventor. There may be modifications in the original invention to facilitate production or to adapt it to new uses. Without innovation, inventions are stillborn.

The transfer and adoption of technologies is also essential for progress. In historical times, the dissemination of knowledge has often been the consequence of marauding armies or of traveling traders. Around the middle of the first millennium BC, the establishment of a Persian empire opened the way between Mediterranean Europe and distant Asia, India in particular. Alexander spread Greek arms and learning to the Indus. Later, the Roman and Islamic civilizations gathered the knowledge of many peoples and built on it—a combination of discovery, invention, and transfer. More recently, writing and new technologies of communication have greatly facilitated the spread of knowledge as well as its generation.

Discovery and invention have been predominantly the achievement of individuals. They may not be revealed to others or may never be implemented. Cumulative discovery and invention is a social rather than an individual process. Discoveries and inventions must be announced, they must be accepted, and there must be innovation if there is to be scientific or technological progress. Wide knowledge of a new discovery leads to further discovery, replacement by a superior technology. Thus, knowledge, acceptance, adoption, and implementation become part of the process of discovery and invention. Columbus was not the first European to discover America, just the first with a public information and relations officer (himself) aboard.

The progress of discovery and invention depends on a supply of inventors and discoverers and a demand for the knowledge and products of their work. Historically, there have been large differences in the pace of discovery and invention and also in social and cultural attitudes toward novelty and change. In the following chapters, we explore the large differences between cultures and seek explanations. We also consider the gains in human cognitive abilities resulting from the great inventions of language and writing, among others, and how they may influence the continuing supply of discoveries and inventions.

SUMMARY

Chapters 2 and 3 are historical, from animal toolmakers and tool users to the invention of agriculture. What are the characteristics of animals most prone to make and to use tools? What are the conditions under which such activities are most likely to occur? How did hominids and early humans advance on animals?

Chapter 4 is comparative, starting with the invention of writing. We examine the two earliest civilizations on which there is abundant information, Sumer and Egypt, seeking to understand intercultural differences in the level and in the kind of achievement and considering the circumstances that may have contributed to the difference.

Chapter 5 focuses on Greek advances in abstract thinking and their contributions to the Scientific Revolution much later. There are numerous hypotheses proposing to explain their achievements by contrast with the founder civilizations, Egypt in particular. They are not mutually exclusive. I attempt to evaluate their relevance and significance. The foreshortened civilizations of the Western Hemisphere will be mentioned only in the context of parallel evolution of discovery and invention.

China (chapter 6) is by far the longest uninterrupted civilization in history. Hence, it must be compared both with the founder civilizations and Greece and with the Europe that retrieved the Greek achievements, corrected and advanced on them, and created the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. During its long history, China has accounted for many inventions; but in discovery, it has lagged both classical Greece and modern Europe. Seeking to understand China’s lag is the inverse of explaining Greek and European achievements.

In the light of what has been learned in the contrast between Greece and China, Chapter 7 considers briefly the two civilizations with full access to the Greek achievement—Rome, which did not advance it, and Islam, which did briefly but changed its mind and turned against it. Why was the opportunity neglected by Rome and rejected by Islam?

It was backwoods Europe, not one of the older and more advanced civilizations, that picked up where Greece had led and advanced much further. Chapter 8 asks what is new and different in the Western culture, how the process of discovery and invention has revolutionized society and perhaps the species itself. What started as the Scientific Revolution and became the Industrial Revolution was without precedent, traveling in unexplored territory. Finally, we take a look at the more distant future: what are the alternative scenarios in a world dominated by a culture of science and technology but a population still mired in traditional cultures, at odds on its uses and ends? The Industrial Revolution is over; what comes next?

II

Origins of Discovery and Invention among Animals

Creativity did not originate with humans. Some discovery and invention long preceded the rise of hominids in evolutionary and in universal time. But why consider invention and discovery by other animals?

Homo sapiens too is an animal who evolved from other primates, who in turn had evolved. The behavior of tool-using animals tells us something about that of our immediate ancestors since most of their tools, until quite recently, were not much different from those used by apes. Animal inventions and their adoption inform us on the conditions for change and progress.

Changes in animal behavior and accomplishments that are not exclusively attributable to genetic evolution are exceedingly slow, with some isolated exceptions. Their results are modest to the modern mind but important for survival. Long time spans would be required to trace such progress. Most of the evidence is fragile and perishable, much of it intangible, such as evolution of communication. Occasionally, one can observe an animal discovery or invention and witness its transmission to the next generation, but most of the evidence must be comparisons of members of the same species in different locations and observation of differences in behavior, in culture.

The numerous hominids, from one or more of which we are descended, are all extinct. We cannot observe their behavior and can only infer uncertainly from old bones and stones that remain. The apes who share our distant ancestors survive, providing perhaps our best information on the ways of life and behavior of early hominids. But other animals also offer evidence of invention and innovation and of the qualities that promote them. To explore the roots of creativity, one must consider both the abilities required and the conditions under which they are expressed. Apes, dolphins, and other animals in captivity solve problems and demonstrate abilities not observed in their native habitats. One must also consider the conditions for dissemination and preservation of new knowledge.

There is another reason for discussing man’s animal ancestors, our prehuman roots, and that is the nature of aggression. Fighting for dominance, for food, for sex is common; but intercommunity warfare is also found among our nearest relatives. Weapons were among the original tools. When institutionalized in war with weapons of mass destruction at its disposal, aggression is the greatest threat to the future of progress and of civilization itself. But this is a subject for consideration toward the end of this book.

LEARNING: COGNITIVE VERSUS GENETIC

Until recently, the prevailing view—following Descartes—has been that animals are automata. Now almost opposite views are gaining support—that many animals have consciousness, some even self-consciousness, reasoning ability, occasionally even a moral sense. What is clear is that animals learn; learning is the foundation of discovery and invention. Even some low forms of life adapt and use tools. But do they discover, with its implication of conscious awareness? Do they invent, with its implication of intent? Learning can be the product of serendipity and natural selection or of cognitive processes. It is only the latter that concerns us. Discoveries by animals are not explanations, just particular findings.

Bacteria and viruses quickly develop resistance to antibiotics, but that learning is solely genetic change. Some ants invented agriculture, growing fungi fifty million years before Homo sapiens but without a cognitive component. When generations are measured in days instead of decades, offspring are in the thousands instead of one or two at a time, and infant mortality is very high, genetic learning can be sure and swift. Some economists have found that even ants and bees have mastered Economics 101 and Physics 101; they are better at cost/benefit analysis than humans. This is all very interesting but no indication of creativity or cognitive ability. One might as well argue that meteors have mastered Newton’s laws of motion.

The difference between genetic change and cognitive change is, first, that genetic change may come at a very high cost through chance variation and a brutal system of natural selection; cognitive change can be self-selected, independent of chance variation. Second, cognitive change can come much more quickly since it can spread horizontally, almost simultaneously, via innovation, communication, and imitation. Genetic change spreads only vertically, down the chain of generations. Third, genetic change is indefinitely replicated, until displaced by further change. Cognitive change can undergo modification at every transfer, and it can be forgotten; it is not passed on automatically but must be learned, taught, and relearned.

How to distinguish between learned behavior and genetic determinism? Learned behavior in the wild can be observed. In the case of orphaned young animals, do they know what to eat, what to avoid, how to use sticks to seek food or stones to break nuts? Do they build shelters, or must they be taught? Do they learn through observation, imitation, or homeschooling by the parents? Many ducks learn to fly in a V formation. How this has come about we do not know. No avian Galileo has ever figured out that this formation is aerodynamically efficient. A Darwinian explanation is more plausible, that by prolonged unintentional trial and error, those flying formations that took advantage of aerodynamics and rotation of the lead bird had higher survival rates. But orphaned ducks and geese have to learn to fly this way.

An indirect indication is the number of young that the female of the species produces, the time it takes them to reach maturity, and life expectancy. If the female produces hundreds or thousands of young, they cannot rely on instruction for survival. Species bearing infrequently and in small litters, especially if one at a time, are likely to depend on years of learning by the young for their survival and that of the species. If training or practice is important, it is likely that the knowledge will be passed on to the younger generation. Chimp mothers have been observed providing detailed technical information to their young on the use of stones to crack nuts. The genetic component of behavior declines relative to the learning component as we move up the tree of evolution, but it is always important.

Apes and primates are overstressed if the purpose is to learn about conditions for discovery and invention. They are our first cousins. But other animals, quite different from us and only remotely related, also occasionally discover and invent; they provide additional observations of ability to invent and on conditions favorable to invention.

Discovery is learning for the first time; nearly all learning is but rediscovery. Animals discover new feeding grounds and new foods and pass this knowledge to their offspring. Birds locate new nesting places and establish new migratory patterns, which their offspring must be taught. This is discovery as defined in the Age of Exploration. Whether any animals have discovered, in the scientific sense of the term, is highly doubtful. Birds ride on wind flow and rise on thermals, bur how do they learn, and what do they understand? We cannot enter the mind of an ape as it uses levers and projectiles, much less the mind of a dolphin or an intelligent clam, the octopus, and observe whether repeated experience of cause and effect has ever led to any general principle, but it is doubtful—to empirical rules, perhaps; to general principles, no. Many animals ask what? Do apes, dolphins, elephants ever ask why? Not to our knowledge.

TOOL-USING AND TOOLMAKING BEHAVIOR

Man has been described as the toolmaking animal. Apes and some monkeys are the principal tool users in the animal world. They have learned to use sticks and stones as tools, as means of access to food, as defensive or aggressive weapons. Chimps use sticks not only to fish for termites and other insects but also as toothpicks and for extraction of loose teeth (Wade 1999, 2070). Bigger sticks are used for extended reach, as clubs, as projectiles, as flyswatters, as levers. They are shaped into spears and used for hunting, perhaps for warfare (Beck 1980, 45–105; Gibbons 2007, 1063). They use stones to pound nuts open, as anvils, as projectiles and use leaves as sponges, cleaners, protective covering. Other apes use a variety of tools but less often than chimps (Moura and Lee 2004, 1909). Capuchins and other monkeys also are frequent tool users.

Tool using, even toolmaking, is not limited to primates or even to animals we consider advanced. Among nonprimates, elephants are the most adept users and makers of tools. Wild elephants lay grass on their backs for protection from insects and sun, wave branches to drive off biting flies, use grass to wipe their ear cavities, plaster grass and mud on cuts and injuries, and use twigs to reach food and to dislodge leeches. They throw objects with trunk and foot and brandish branches at people, vehicles, and other animals. Some have used branches to block traffic, uprooted trees and used them to knock down a fence. They dig water holes and plug them with bark and grass (Chevalier-Skolnikoff and Liska 1993). Their burial behavior will be mentioned later. In captivity, they take up paint and brush and musical instruments (Kaplan 2000, A1, A29). But even in the wild, they draw lines in the sand with sticks. They kick and play ball with their front feet (Alexander 2000, 53).

Vultures use small stones to break ostrich eggs. Various bird species have learned to drop stones as a defensive tactic or at shellfish and nuts to break them open. Some herons use bits of bait to attract fish. Some of Darwin’s finches, the nuthatch, the black-breasted buzzard, the Egyptian vulture, the black cockatoo, and the blue jay use tools. Wild New Caledonian crows fashion forked twigs to reach food, and a captive one recently consistently bends straight wires into hooks to lift a food bucket embedded in a tube (Weir, Chappell, and Kucinich 2001; Hunt 1996). There are instances of crows and parrots solving multistep problems such as using a stick to reach a tool to recover food (Taylor et al. 2007).

An octopus in Puget Sound has been observed patiently waiting until a clam has opened its shell, then inserting a pebble so the bivalve could not close it, and proceeding to eat it at its leisure—tool use for sure, but foresight and planning? There are tool-using animals not noted for IQ—wasps, ant lions, worm lions, as well as the brainier species (Griffin 1984, 118–32; Vauclair 1996, 53–83).

Use of objects as tools is largely limited to species with the physical ability to manipulate them—the tentacles of an octopus, the trunk of an elephant, the agile hands of apes and monkeys. But there are partial exceptions to most rules. The dolphin is very poorly equipped with prehensile organs; its flippers are useless, and only its beak can grasp and manipulate objects. Nevertheless, some dolphins use tools. A dolphin has been observed to kill scorpion fish and use the poisonous spine to drive an eel from its lair; others have used bits of fish as bait to attract other fish and covered their beaks with sponges for protection. Captive dolphins have used feathers and broken tiles to wipe or scrape their surroundings in imitation of their keepers (Cannon and Micklethwaite Peterson 1994, 182, 184). Given their physical limitations, most of their inventions must take other forms—communication approximating language, in complexity, and observed organized behavior, whether to herd the fish they eat or to attack the sharks with whom they compete and by which they are threatened.

The most extraordinary behavior of dolphins is their apparent empathy for humans, which has been known for thousands of years—saving them from drowning, protecting them from shark attacks. And in the Mediterranean, Asia, and South America, they herd fish for local fishermen to catch. They are not trained, just volunteers. On the coast of Brazil, fishermen and dolphins have cooperated for centuries; the dolphins herd the fish and signal to the fishermen when to cast their nets. Such teamwork is found also in other parts of the world. How it came about initially we do not know, but the practice has been handed down for many generations (National Geographic program March 29,2003).

Many animals that can use tools have the physical capacity to make them. But only apes, monkeys, and elephants have been confirmed to do this frequently. Toolmaking is a near monopoly of primates but so primitive by our standards that it can scarcely be differentiated from tool using—monkeys stripping leaves from a twig before using it to fish for termites, orangutans tearing off a leafy branch to use as a sort of raincoat, elephants gathering sheaves of long grasses to cover their backs to protect themselves from a blazing tropical sun and biting insects. The use of a stick as a lever or as a club by chimps rarely involves much manufacture. Perhaps the most complex tool production is the making of sponges by collecting leaves, macerating them by chewing, and squeezing them into a ball or the shaping of a stick into a spearpoint by gnawing.

Animals with access to man-made objects learn to put them to use; apes build ladders by piling boxes, for instance. Orangutans construct ropes by braiding straw. A number of apes as well as elephants in zoos have been taught to paint, and their products are selling well. Human observation of animal behavior in the wild does not reflect the full range of their performance, much less their capabilities. What animals do is a function of the environment, of perceived needs and opportunities, as well as of abilities. The gorilla rarely uses tools in the wild, but in captivity, it is as adept as the chimp.

Humans have long used various domesticated animals as tools in hunting, fishing, and guarding. But there are instances of cooperative activities between humans and wild animals that amount to reciprocal tool use. Already noted is the practice of dolphins helping fishermen. The Gbaya people of Cameroon rely on a bird, the greater honeyguide, to locate honey nests, for which the birds are rewarded with a cut of the take. The hunters summon the bird by whistling, singing, or rhythmically tapping on tree trunk with machetes (Smithsonian 2001, 78–83). Not all such behavior may qualify as tool using, according to the restrictive definition of Beck (1980, 6–10) that the tool must be an external object free of attachment that is manipulated by the user, a functional extension of the body to attain an immediate goal. Call it employment.

ANIMAL INVENTION

Invention may be adaptation to environment or may be a means of altering the environment. The former predominates among animals and early humans; the latter has grown in importance since the invention of agriculture.

Tool-using and even toolmaking behavior need not be the product of invention. We do not regard the beautiful webs of many spiders or even the complex nests of some birds as inventions. Nor is invention limited to tools. What of the procedures involved in hunting, fishing, construction of shelters?

Initially, it is enough to ask which species bear young that survive without support or tutorials by adults of the species, which species experience prolonged dependency and require extensive learning. Apes, dolphins, and elephants take almost as long to reach maturity as humans and can live to a ripe old age. Much of what they learn has been discovered or invented by their ancestors.

Discovery and invention will be limited to cognitive achievements, to the exclusion of progressive change that comes about by chance variation and natural selection. If tools are used in the wild, they have probably been invented and then transmitted. Direct observation of an invention by an animal in its natural habitat is extremely rare. Invention is more frequently observed among captive animals, but there is some question about the role of observation and imitation versus autonomous invention.

The initial invention in nearly all cases must be inferred from its behavioral consequences. Behavior that has to be learned by individual members of the species must have been invented at one time. Another indication that animals invent is based on comparison of behavior of different populations of the same subspecies that have no contact with each other. Behavior that is universal in some groups and absent in others is likely based on invention. In particular, such groups should speak somewhat different languages. There are a vocabulary of sounds and a vocabulary of gestures and postures. We know that, even among current human populations, the meaning of a particular gesture may vary widely; what is a sign of pleasure in one may be an insult in another. Spoken languages are mutually unintelligible; they differ in structure as well as in sound. Why should we expect monkeys everywhere to have identical gestures and vocalizations? As a matter of fact, they do not. Such cultural differences result from local inventions.

There are other differences in behavioral repertoire of members of the same species in distant habitats. Chimps use stones and sticks to crack nuts and hard fruit in some areas, not in others (Kummer and Goodall 1985, 209–12). Meat-eating by baboons and chimpanzees appears to be restricted to limited populations (Strum 1975).

Miyadi (1964) studied the behavior of more than twenty macaque troops scattered in Japan. Nonuniformity proved to be a fundamental characteristic of troops as well as of individuals among Japanese macaques. He found that larger troops tended to have a larger vocabulary than smaller troops, but the sounds made in one troop were not so unique that they could not be understood by members of another. The troops were not completely isolated; solitary monkeys may travel between troops and serve as agents for diffusion of culture. When it came to behavior patterns, however, there were large differences—choice of diet, paternal care of babies, sexual behavior. One macaque learned to wash sweet potatoes in seawater before eating them and to use trays for this purpose. The principle was later applied by the same macaque, Imo, to cleaning wheat by flotation. Imo’s discovery or invention was probably accidental. But its application to the flotation of grain was extraordinary. It revealed understanding and qualified as cognitive transfer to a slightly different domain. But only some members of the troop adopted these practices, mainly the younger macaques (Hirata, Watanabe, and Kawai 2002).

Self-medication by animals, especially by primates (but also parrots and elephants)—such as swallowing selected leaves or grass to rid themselves of intestinal parasites, eating clay for diarrhea and detoxification, or using natural insect repellants—can plausibly be explained as discoveries, although Engel (2002) makes no such claim. Their use is problem-solving invention. Some selected medications are bitter and unpleasant to the user, suggesting conscious diagnosis and what we anthropomorphically might call future orientation or gratification deferment. Some animals are addicted to drugs—goats to coffee beans, llamas to coca leaves, some primates to the alcohol in fermented fruit. These are discoveries rather than inventions.

One may question whether the elaborate nests of some birds or the complex burrows made by some mammals are more than instinctive, but the elaborate engineering works of beavers in carefully selected sites and with selected materials seems to be invention, if not toolmaking of a higher order than that exhibited by apes. They may not be tools strictly speaking, but they are functional modifications of the environment, long-term goal-directed activities whose production sometimes relies on tools (Griffin 1992, 80–100). Such inventions have reproductive and survival value.

Tool using is common among chimps, orangutans, and some species of Cebus monkeys; it is rare among wild gorillas, who, however, are capable tool users in captivity. Why the difference? In all species, invention is a rare event. Perhaps it is no rarer among gorillas and orangutans than among chimps. But chimps are social animals; their inventors are observed and imitated, their achievement passed on to succeeding generations. Orangutans in Sumatra are much less dispersed than in Borneo and are more frequent tool users. The gorilla lives in small relatively isolated family groups whose invention is unlikely to be observed, imitated, or passed on. Solitude is equivalent to secrecy. Socialization is analogous to communication, a precursor condition for language. Numbers also matter; larger numbers mean more inventions. Cebus monkeys greatly outnumber the great apes.

The general conditions propitiating the use of tools, according to Van Schaik et al. (1999), are opportunities, if not dietary needs, for extractive foraging as exemplified by hard nuts that must be cracked open or termite mounds; manipulative skills; the intelligence required for invention and observational learning; and social tolerance in a gregarious setting. Some of these conditions raise the question of need and intent. Most of the inventions observed or implied by animal behavior are not needed; they may be convenient or useful. They may expand sources of food or facilitate its procurement. Many inventions start with a chance discovery, and the inventive process is conceiving the discovery as a solution and identifying a problem it can solve, such as mud and insect bites. It is a primitive cause-and-effect approach. If there is a case for intent, it is the cracking of some very hard nuts, which are an important component of diet when other more easily obtainable foods are not in season (De Waal 2001, 243–45). The process involves hitting a nut many times with a heavy rock with precision, to crack it without crushing it. It is hard work and takes long to master. Could it have been invented by chance in play?

What these quite different evolutionary paths of very diverse species in different environments share is an element of versatility—problem-solving ability, invention if you will, that transcends their environment. Animals in captivity, primates in particular but also dolphins, have demonstrated an ability to invent, to solve problems, much more frequently