Kinetic creativity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Beginning with a detailed example of ravens accessing food not immediately accessible, this article documents the fact that tool-making and tool-using are a creative kinetic process that engages mindful bodies in the course of their animate lives. It shows how thinking in movement and kinesthetic memory are basic aspects of synergies of meaningful movement in tool-making and tool-using and how corporeal and topological concepts link early hominid stone tools and teeth, concepts such as hardness and edges. The import of if/then relationships becomes evident in a processual awareness of consequential relationships between movement and effect: if I do this, then this happens. Two notable research studies of tool-making are considered, one concerned with identifying areas of the brain involved in tool-making, one concerned with identifying areas of the brain involved in experienced animate realities. Sperry’s conclusions drawn from his research studies of the brain and Kelso’s extension of Sperry’s conclusions in his neurobiological research studies of coordination dynamics support the latter approach. Both sustain the central import of self-movement and the awareness of movement in the process of tool-making and tool-using.