"Tool use" has been the layman's term for the supreme human skill. Though tool use / technology is not rare in animal species, the outlandishly large brain of the human species allows it to develop tools in multiple realms.
Dr. Gherard Barlow delineated these in the Four Tool Realms. He posited a heirarchy of distinct arenas in which technology is be developed:
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•social - tools exist and are developed cooperatively between groups and individuals (language, culture, art)
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•material - tools exist soley in the material world (weapons, livestock & crops, shelter)
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•internal - tools are developed solely within the individual (ideas, dreams, internal dialog, emotional stances, reasoning)
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•apsychic - tools are developed entirely beyond the influence of the brain (jungian synchronicity, spiritual experiences)
Dr. Barlow postulated that each arena of tool use depends on the one beneath it. For example, technology in the social realm cannot exist without the technology in the material realm. It is impossible for one human to communicate with another unless there exists the understanding, though perhaps unconscious, that the human organism is itself a material tool that can store and interpret social tools. This understanding of the human as a material tool depends upon the existence of an internal tool which has been able to achieve an understanding of the relevance of the material tool to its present situation. Dr. Barlow's unique perspective was teh supposition that there was another realm of tool use which occurred beyond consciousness, in which environment and circumstance were manipulated apriori examination by the brain. In fact, Barlow suggested that the brain itself was a tool of this deeper "apsychic" realm.
Barlow said, in his famous lecture to the Higher Biology Faculty of Kinshassa University:
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In this apsychic sphere is where the WHY is. And the WHY cannot be accessed by any employment of the internal technologies of the brain. Believe me, friends, no one is more grief-stricken by this awful circumstance than I ... You may ask then "Is Barlow suggesting that were we to cut open his cranium, pull out the hemispheres and feed them to the Hullshays, he would still have access to tool use?' Yes, my friends, that is what Barlow is suggesting.
