tools and tracendence

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Mon, 6 Jul 1998 15:56:15 -0700 (PDT)

An upcoming review by Bente Elkgaer from the Copenhagen Business
School contains the following quote from Dewey as part of a review
of Sylvia Scribner's collected writings. Seemed worth sharing.
mike
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Dewey quote, p. 185-186, Experience and Nature, 1925...

The invention and use of tools have played a large part
in consolidating meanings, because a tool is a thing used
as a means to consequences, instead of being taken directly
and physically. It is intrinsically relational, anticipatory,
predictive. Without reference to the absent, or "transcendence",
nothing is a tool. (...) As to be a tool, or to be used as
means for consequences, is to have and to endow with meaning,
language, being the tool of tools, is the cherishing mother
of all significance.