Prehension: The Hand and the Emergence of Humanity

In praise of the hand: A philosopher considers the crucial role of the hand in human evolution, particularly with respect to language.

“McGinn is an ingenious philosopher who thinks like a laser and writes like a dream.”—Steven Pinker

This book is a hymn to the hand. In Prehension, Colin McGinn links questions from science to philosophical concerns to consider something that we take for granted: the importance of the hand in everything we do. Drawing on evolutionary biology, anatomy, archaeo...