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The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
"A startling argument . . . provocative . . . absorbing." -- The Boston Globe
"Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species."
-- The New York Times Book Review
The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth.
In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets.
"A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." -- The Washington Post
"Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species."
-- The New York Times Book Review
The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth.
In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets.
"A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." -- The Washington Post
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
84 people are currently reading
876 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 19, 2009
A disappointment. The book promised to talk about the connection between the hand and the brain, and to reveal the hand' role in making us the brainy creatures we are today. But there is very little of neurology in here, and lots of "gee, isn't the hand an amazing bit of bioengineering!" As well as stories of people who can do remarkable things with their hands, like play the piano and juggle. OK, that's cool -- though it would be even cooler if we were talking both at once -- but not cool enough to justify a 400-page book.
February 19, 2015
Two and a half stars. This was very promising at the beginning: the story of how the evolution of the human hand led the development of the human brain. The first 4 chapters or so deliver on this promise, and are utterly fascinating. But then the book degrades into a collection of musings on human nature. I think the blame lies with the editor... this should have been a shorter and tighter book. I recommend the first half.
January 25, 2018
I liked the beginning chapters on the whole and their focus on anthropology, evolution of primate anatomy, and linguistics – particularly sign language (p.200) and apraxia (p. 205). I enjoyed Anat’s story about practicing Feldenkrais therapy (p. 247-57), but felt disappoint that Wilson’s point to telling her story was to demonstrate, “how the hands can bring an individual not into a distinctive kind of work but into transforming relationships with people and ideas” (256) –uninspired.
There was much less neurology than I expected for a book about how the hand shapes the brain. Wilson unpacks assertions with lengthy, sentimental anecdotes about the impressive ways humans use their hands - like juggling, marionette manipulation, and cooking (why the excessive recognition and praise for that San Francisco chef?) – and rarely connects the theory to the thesis. The book eventually degenerates to Wilson’s ramblings on human creativity and learning, and his ideas for how to best nurture it. Again, not really sticking to the thesis.
There was much less neurology than I expected for a book about how the hand shapes the brain. Wilson unpacks assertions with lengthy, sentimental anecdotes about the impressive ways humans use their hands - like juggling, marionette manipulation, and cooking (why the excessive recognition and praise for that San Francisco chef?) – and rarely connects the theory to the thesis. The book eventually degenerates to Wilson’s ramblings on human creativity and learning, and his ideas for how to best nurture it. Again, not really sticking to the thesis.
February 3, 2026
Using the hand as a focus, examines evolution of body, brain, tools, music and language.
This book is organized in two major parts. The first three chapters discuss the evolution of the hand and the centrality of the hand in human evolution. The remaining chapters introduce the reader to a wide range of fascinating people that Frank Wilson has known throughout his life and who have given him insights into the amazing versatility of the hand.
The three chapters on evolution are worth summarizing. They offer a significant number of insights that are not found elsewhere but are intuitively appealing.
We are not the only land animals to have learned to walk on our hind legs, and not the only ones to have found other things to do with the front legs. Tyrannosaurus rex let them atrophy. Squirrels use them to hold nuts. Kangaroos put them to some use or another. But most significantly, our monkey and ape ancestors have found them increasingly useful for other purposes. Human beings are the only primates to walk exclusively on their hind legs, freeing up the front legs for other purposes.
Monkeys use their hands to grab food and feed themselves. Their hands are extremely well adapted for climbing and jumping around in trees. Monkeys developed binocular color vision, a fair amount of flexibility in their arms, and brains capable of planning and executing sophisticated moves with their hands.
Apes moved from the tops of branches to underneath them, swinging rather than climbing. This brachiation involved some evolution in their shoulders which has served humans well. It also let heavy bodied animals climb higher into the trees, where the food was.
During this long evolution a thumb emerged distinct from the other four digits. It was different, but not yet in a position to coordinate with the other fingers to hold things. As Wilson says, apes are equipped to pick up suitcases, but they can't pick up a baseball with a thumb and fingers.
The last common ancestor between human beings and our closest ape relative, the chimpanzee, appears to have lived about 7 million years ago. Since that time the world has experienced a series of ice ages. Jungle habitats shrunk repeatedly, and our ancestors were forced out onto the open savanna. Wilson uses Lucy, the Australopithecus discovered by the Leakeys, an anthropoid who lived 3.9 to 4.2 million years ago as his frame of reference. Lucy's brain was about the same size as that of the chimpanzee, but her body had changed significantly from that of apes.
Most significantly, Lucy was a full-time biped. Her hands were free. Her legs had evolved significantly; she needed to move quickly to avoid predators and to catch a meal on the open savanna. Her shoulders and arms had also evolved. She was able to use an overhand motion to throw rocks. The ability to throw stones was undoubtedly useful for keeping predators at bay and killing other animals for food. She still did not, however, have a fully modern human hand. In particular her hand was not suited for wielding a club. Its musculature did not allow the thumb to be placed alongside a stick and oppose the ring and pinky finger in a powerful grip.
Rock throwing is done with only one hand, and it takes a lot of practice. Wilson hypothesizes that this is the time in which handedness (favoring righties 9 to 1) came to be strongly expressed in the human genome. Tool use would drive it further, with one hand holding the work object and the other hand holding a tool to craft the object at hand.
Homo erectus evolved the ability to hold tools. Oldowan stone axes date back as far as 2 ½ million years were created by people holding the stone to be formed in one hand (usually left) and chipping flakes off with another stone held in the right. It required some evolution of the musculature, and evolution of the wrist bones to endure the constant pounding. One of the strengths of the book is the generous and informative illustrations of how bones and muscles evolved to meet the new tasks they faced throughout the course of evolution.
Human brains evolved quickly about the time that tools came into use. There are several different theories as to why this happened, all of which probably have some validity. The size of the communities grew, necessitating the intelligence to manage broader networks of relationships. Individuals became more specialized. Toolmaking is a craft. The brain evolved to control the increasingly useful hand and arm. There was almost certainly more cooperation in the hunt.
The need for communication grew for several reasons. The increased size of the tribe, the need to coordinate more complex activities, and the need to teach culturally acquired skills. The surprise is that language did not appear until very late in the game, perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. This suggests that our anthropoid ancestors must have made extensive use of gesture, by hand and facial expression, probably accompanied by utterances that were not yet symbolic language but nonetheless useful in communication.
Wilson discusses the structure of the brain, and the close relationship between the portions that control the hands and those that deal with language. Intelligent, social animals such as Homo erectus had to be able to communicate effectively in order to manage in the complex societies that they had developed. Wilson's theory is that spoken language, using audio tokens as symbols, is simply a much faster way to communicate than pantomime.
To summarize the first three chapters, and the book in general, the hand has played a central role in every aspect of human evolution. The shoulder, arm and hand saw significant evolution even as the size of the brain grew very little. Then, as hands became more adept, tools came into use in society grew more complex, the brain exploded in size to its present 1.5 liters.
The rest of the book focuses on the extraordinarily varied uses of the hand, and some extraordinarily talented practitioners in each of the areas mentioned. Wilson himself has a very broad range of interests and acquaintances. In his professional life he is a surgeon who deals with problems of the hand, especially those of musicians. The stories he tells of people in different professions emphasize how integral the hand is to the human animal. We are not simply creatures of intellect.
One of the take-home points for this father of young children is how important it is for children to spend a lot of time creating things with their hands. Painting, sawing and nailing, cooking and so on. Even at the time this book was written, in the late 1990s, it was clear that children were succumbing more and more to the allure of computers and video entertainment. Wilson's strong advice would be not to do it. We learn by doing, and we do with our hands.
Contents ====================================Character/topic
1. Dawn
2. The Hand-Thought-Language Nexus
3. The Arm We Brought Down from the Trees
4. Puppet Lessons from Alexandria and Düsseldorf ===========Puppeteer
5. Hand, Eye, and Sky ============================Juggling
6. The Grip of the Past ============================Rockclimbing
7. The Twenty-Four-Karat Thumb =====================Goldsmith
8. The Right Hand Knows What the Left Hand Just Did =========Handedness
9. Bad Boys, Polyliths, and the Heterotechnic Revolution =======Dragracing
10. The Articulate Hand ===========================Language
11. In Tune and Evolving Prestissimo ===================Musician
12. Lucy to Lulu to Rose ===========================Professional chef
13. Tough, Tender, and Tenacious =====================Physical rehabilitation
14. Hidden in the Hand ============================Magic
15. Head for the Hands ============================Education
This book is organized in two major parts. The first three chapters discuss the evolution of the hand and the centrality of the hand in human evolution. The remaining chapters introduce the reader to a wide range of fascinating people that Frank Wilson has known throughout his life and who have given him insights into the amazing versatility of the hand.
The three chapters on evolution are worth summarizing. They offer a significant number of insights that are not found elsewhere but are intuitively appealing.
We are not the only land animals to have learned to walk on our hind legs, and not the only ones to have found other things to do with the front legs. Tyrannosaurus rex let them atrophy. Squirrels use them to hold nuts. Kangaroos put them to some use or another. But most significantly, our monkey and ape ancestors have found them increasingly useful for other purposes. Human beings are the only primates to walk exclusively on their hind legs, freeing up the front legs for other purposes.
Monkeys use their hands to grab food and feed themselves. Their hands are extremely well adapted for climbing and jumping around in trees. Monkeys developed binocular color vision, a fair amount of flexibility in their arms, and brains capable of planning and executing sophisticated moves with their hands.
Apes moved from the tops of branches to underneath them, swinging rather than climbing. This brachiation involved some evolution in their shoulders which has served humans well. It also let heavy bodied animals climb higher into the trees, where the food was.
During this long evolution a thumb emerged distinct from the other four digits. It was different, but not yet in a position to coordinate with the other fingers to hold things. As Wilson says, apes are equipped to pick up suitcases, but they can't pick up a baseball with a thumb and fingers.
The last common ancestor between human beings and our closest ape relative, the chimpanzee, appears to have lived about 7 million years ago. Since that time the world has experienced a series of ice ages. Jungle habitats shrunk repeatedly, and our ancestors were forced out onto the open savanna. Wilson uses Lucy, the Australopithecus discovered by the Leakeys, an anthropoid who lived 3.9 to 4.2 million years ago as his frame of reference. Lucy's brain was about the same size as that of the chimpanzee, but her body had changed significantly from that of apes.
Most significantly, Lucy was a full-time biped. Her hands were free. Her legs had evolved significantly; she needed to move quickly to avoid predators and to catch a meal on the open savanna. Her shoulders and arms had also evolved. She was able to use an overhand motion to throw rocks. The ability to throw stones was undoubtedly useful for keeping predators at bay and killing other animals for food. She still did not, however, have a fully modern human hand. In particular her hand was not suited for wielding a club. Its musculature did not allow the thumb to be placed alongside a stick and oppose the ring and pinky finger in a powerful grip.
Rock throwing is done with only one hand, and it takes a lot of practice. Wilson hypothesizes that this is the time in which handedness (favoring righties 9 to 1) came to be strongly expressed in the human genome. Tool use would drive it further, with one hand holding the work object and the other hand holding a tool to craft the object at hand.
Homo erectus evolved the ability to hold tools. Oldowan stone axes date back as far as 2 ½ million years were created by people holding the stone to be formed in one hand (usually left) and chipping flakes off with another stone held in the right. It required some evolution of the musculature, and evolution of the wrist bones to endure the constant pounding. One of the strengths of the book is the generous and informative illustrations of how bones and muscles evolved to meet the new tasks they faced throughout the course of evolution.
Human brains evolved quickly about the time that tools came into use. There are several different theories as to why this happened, all of which probably have some validity. The size of the communities grew, necessitating the intelligence to manage broader networks of relationships. Individuals became more specialized. Toolmaking is a craft. The brain evolved to control the increasingly useful hand and arm. There was almost certainly more cooperation in the hunt.
The need for communication grew for several reasons. The increased size of the tribe, the need to coordinate more complex activities, and the need to teach culturally acquired skills. The surprise is that language did not appear until very late in the game, perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. This suggests that our anthropoid ancestors must have made extensive use of gesture, by hand and facial expression, probably accompanied by utterances that were not yet symbolic language but nonetheless useful in communication.
Wilson discusses the structure of the brain, and the close relationship between the portions that control the hands and those that deal with language. Intelligent, social animals such as Homo erectus had to be able to communicate effectively in order to manage in the complex societies that they had developed. Wilson's theory is that spoken language, using audio tokens as symbols, is simply a much faster way to communicate than pantomime.
To summarize the first three chapters, and the book in general, the hand has played a central role in every aspect of human evolution. The shoulder, arm and hand saw significant evolution even as the size of the brain grew very little. Then, as hands became more adept, tools came into use in society grew more complex, the brain exploded in size to its present 1.5 liters.
The rest of the book focuses on the extraordinarily varied uses of the hand, and some extraordinarily talented practitioners in each of the areas mentioned. Wilson himself has a very broad range of interests and acquaintances. In his professional life he is a surgeon who deals with problems of the hand, especially those of musicians. The stories he tells of people in different professions emphasize how integral the hand is to the human animal. We are not simply creatures of intellect.
One of the take-home points for this father of young children is how important it is for children to spend a lot of time creating things with their hands. Painting, sawing and nailing, cooking and so on. Even at the time this book was written, in the late 1990s, it was clear that children were succumbing more and more to the allure of computers and video entertainment. Wilson's strong advice would be not to do it. We learn by doing, and we do with our hands.
Contents ====================================Character/topic
1. Dawn
2. The Hand-Thought-Language Nexus
3. The Arm We Brought Down from the Trees
4. Puppet Lessons from Alexandria and Düsseldorf ===========Puppeteer
5. Hand, Eye, and Sky ============================Juggling
6. The Grip of the Past ============================Rockclimbing
7. The Twenty-Four-Karat Thumb =====================Goldsmith
8. The Right Hand Knows What the Left Hand Just Did =========Handedness
9. Bad Boys, Polyliths, and the Heterotechnic Revolution =======Dragracing
10. The Articulate Hand ===========================Language
11. In Tune and Evolving Prestissimo ===================Musician
12. Lucy to Lulu to Rose ===========================Professional chef
13. Tough, Tender, and Tenacious =====================Physical rehabilitation
14. Hidden in the Hand ============================Magic
15. Head for the Hands ============================Education
September 30, 2007
The subject is fascinating, the author is a bit of a twit.
November 21, 2018
Boring, opinionated, dry, and one-sided. Like a lot of science.
July 29, 2021
Not for the faint hearted.
This is an excellent and in-depth examination of how human hands have shaped our intellect, our society, and our culture.
It can be methodical in the analysis but this is necessary to make several of the connections that the author asserts.
I recommend the book for anyone who works in the medical field, the arts, or in manual labour. As a health educator in the field of aviation, it is invaluable as a resource and as a way to understand my clients.
This is an excellent and in-depth examination of how human hands have shaped our intellect, our society, and our culture.
It can be methodical in the analysis but this is necessary to make several of the connections that the author asserts.
I recommend the book for anyone who works in the medical field, the arts, or in manual labour. As a health educator in the field of aviation, it is invaluable as a resource and as a way to understand my clients.
August 29, 2021
Damn that book was dense. If all the scientific or theoretical books written for a general audience were lined up in order of accessibility, this would be somewhere on the far end. This despite the fact that it is, as Tom Myers called it, "charming", and that it dances nimbly over some pretty broad & diverse terrain. I like books too that have a perspective to push - here, the necessity of rethinking our concepts regarding intelligence and learning. Amen to that. Wish it had been slightly less of a slog. 3.5
February 5, 2026
He writes in an overly complicated languages for book intended for a general audience. He proposes few of his own ideas and quotes other people way too much (sometimes scientist, sometimes random people who do things with their hands). He wonders off topic.
It was going to be a 2 star rating... but than at the Epilogue he said he believed in palmistry. No. Absolutely not. No. 1 star for this book.
It was going to be a 2 star rating... but than at the Epilogue he said he believed in palmistry. No. Absolutely not. No. 1 star for this book.
June 1, 2024
They lost me during the story of a rock climber who had a rough life while his mom and dad divorced.
Yeah.
In a book about the hand, by one third of the way through it hadn't actually really gotten into the subject. But it talked about monkeys and puppets and jugglers. Oh my.
When it actually ventures into science, it's highly technical and not very readable - this guy is no Siddhartha Mukherjee ("The Emperor of All Maladies") or Sam Kean ("The Disappearing Spoon").
Unfortunately, this was a DNF.
Yeah.
In a book about the hand, by one third of the way through it hadn't actually really gotten into the subject. But it talked about monkeys and puppets and jugglers. Oh my.
When it actually ventures into science, it's highly technical and not very readable - this guy is no Siddhartha Mukherjee ("The Emperor of All Maladies") or Sam Kean ("The Disappearing Spoon").
Unfortunately, this was a DNF.
September 17, 2017
You could not ask for more if you want to learn about the hand - and the brain.
My favorite lesson was about polypod and polylith creations. Proud to be a homo sapiens.
My favorite lesson was about polypod and polylith creations. Proud to be a homo sapiens.
February 6, 2020
A very interesting premise with a fascinating main thesis but the book strays into tangents that can be hard to connect to anything meaningful. The first half was the most worth the time.
April 20, 2020
I saw some negative reviews, but I liked the book. The centrality of the hand/brain connection was enlightening.
April 1, 2024
If this were written by Charles Dawkin, I may call it one of the best books of the century, but it’s not. It’s way too convoluted, and I can’t give it enough credit because the author is unknown. The book is also juggles between topics and I wanted to read a book about the Hand.
June 8, 2015
While _The Hand_ is far from being a perfect book, it never ceases to fascinate. Perhaps one third of the chapters are given over to an impressively compelling argument that the development of the human hand was the proximate stimulus for the development of the human brain. We could climb and throw and catch and manipulate before we could think or reason (in the most technical sense). Another third of the chapters discuss some the quite astonishingly varied feats of which the hand is capable--rock climbing, juggling, and puppetry, just to name a few. And the final third of the book's chapters recount aspects of Wilson's intellectual journey in developing his ideas on the hand.
In this reviewer's opinion, the evolutionary biological argument constituted the meat of the book. I could have done altogether without the intellectual biography (though it was interesting in its way) and without the weaker chapters that eulogize the hand. Still, very few books have provided such a stimulus to my thinking about--well--almost everything. The implications of Wilson's argument ramify throughout all of human culture, and his manner of presentation is personable, his expertise in his subject unsurpassed, and his scope of inquiry thrillingly vast. This is a flawed book, certainly, but nevertheless one of the most exciting reads I've undertaken. Highly recommended.
In this reviewer's opinion, the evolutionary biological argument constituted the meat of the book. I could have done altogether without the intellectual biography (though it was interesting in its way) and without the weaker chapters that eulogize the hand. Still, very few books have provided such a stimulus to my thinking about--well--almost everything. The implications of Wilson's argument ramify throughout all of human culture, and his manner of presentation is personable, his expertise in his subject unsurpassed, and his scope of inquiry thrillingly vast. This is a flawed book, certainly, but nevertheless one of the most exciting reads I've undertaken. Highly recommended.
January 2, 2016
The author builds a strong case for the value of incorporating hands in the learning process. He documents how the human hand evolved uniquely (the ulnar opposition) to give us special tool-making and tool-using skills; these skills gave us the ability to kill prey that added protein to our diet fueling our brain growth at a rate far beyond the brain growth of our chimpanzee cousins. We became human because of our new capacity to grasp, shape and point tools and weapons; no other creature has this capability.
Dr. Wilson's impeccably researched work lays the foundation for improved understanding of how people learn; we learn better in a 3D environment, with 3D objects and tools, than we do in 2D. After all, we live in a very rich 3D world, and can feed our brains a better learning experience by going outside of the 2D world of books, worksheets, and computer screens. Every educator, policy maker and parent should read this book, before they line up to vote for cutting funding for shop class, or any career technical education program.
Dr. Wilson's impeccably researched work lays the foundation for improved understanding of how people learn; we learn better in a 3D environment, with 3D objects and tools, than we do in 2D. After all, we live in a very rich 3D world, and can feed our brains a better learning experience by going outside of the 2D world of books, worksheets, and computer screens. Every educator, policy maker and parent should read this book, before they line up to vote for cutting funding for shop class, or any career technical education program.
July 9, 2011
This book was so interesting. I didn't actually read much of it, only a few chapters and then it was due back at the library. I would like to pick it up again sometime. It was a little more techincal than I thought it would be and I wasn't completely sure I was understanding things correctly all the time, but it was interesting read.
July 18, 2012
I have actually read this book all the way through! (Without understanding quite all of it.) Fascinating and worth while, in so many different directions. Just finished my paper on the hand, thank goodness.
Read
April 9, 2007I'm expecting this book to give me lots of scientific and athropological fodder for phenomenological theories of cognition like the kinds that Dourish and Winograd / Flores summarize.
December 24, 2008
Fascinating study of influences on the brain by actions of the hand. Good especially for pianists!
Want to read
November 19, 2010milford orange stratford
April 14, 2015
Fascinating look at the relationship between the hand, the brain, language, and human beings, including specific implications for learning and education.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews