The academic conundrum... There is a debate in academic circles about the evolution of the brain. The belief held by the followers of Noam Chomsky is that the brain developed its capacity due to the development of language, and that the written and spoken word have driven the development of intellect.

The other side of the debate is that the development of brain capacity and human intellect has been driven by the concurrent development of the hand and its creative capacities.

No doubt, by reading the title of this blog, you know which side I'm on. At every point in the life of academia, the challenge is to overcome its constraints. The movement toward diversity of race, gender and ethnicity is one of the more obvious challenges, now moving well toward solution. The next great challenge will be to overcome the academic bias that values words over hand-crafted work as the primary expression of human culture.