Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 28

Our tools, like our bodies, become “transparent equipment.” We see through them to the task at
hand. Brain imaging studies have shown that as we build fluency, we incorporate tools - pen-
cils, hammers, bicycles, words, numbers, computers - into our bodymind schema. Then, in ac-
cordance with the principle of least effort, we strategically distribute work through the whole
system of mind, body, environment. We use calculators for math. We offload memory to con-
tacts and calendars. We rely on Google for retrieval, so there's less need for recall. And when we
play Scrabble or Tetris, before we see a solution, we move the tiles with our fingers, because it's
faster than modeling those shifts in our minds. xxvi
Figure 2-2. Extended cognition.
Embodiment is heady stuff, so let's explore a basic example. How about the colors of a rainbow?
In school we learn the spectral colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet are
produced by the light of a single wavelength, and all are visible to the human eye, except for in-
digo, which Isaac Newton added so the number of colors would match the number of planets,
notes in a major scale, and days in a week.
This all makes sense, sort of, until you learn that in Japan, people say traffic lights are red, yel-
low, and blue, even though 'Go' is green. xxvii The distinction gets lost in translation since until
the twentieth century, Japanese had only one word, ao, for both blue and green. It wasn't until
1917, when crayons were imported into Japan, that midori, which began as a shade of ao, was
redefined as a new category, green. This split left scars, which is why apples, novices, and traffic
lights are blue.
Interestingly, cross-cultural studies reveal structural similarities behind these colorful distinc-
tions. In the late 1960s, researchers discovered that while the number of color categories varies
from two to eleven, there's a common path that languages follow towards increasing speci-
ficity. xxviii
Figure 2-3. The evolution of color.