Outline of a Theory of Material Engagement

Material engagement theory, which forms the conceptual foundation of this book, is rooted in cognitive archaeology and anthropology but relates and draws insights from many adjacent fields of research in phenomenology and embodied cognitive sciences.In How Things Shape the Mind, 1 I offer a detail exposition of the major working hypotheses and the vision of mind that it embodies.Here, I pre sent an overview of MET's vision and discuss its application to the study of mind and matter. Walk the LineLet's begin with a simple task.Take a pen and paper.Draw a line.The sketch of any form will do.Just leave a trace.Make a mark.What constitutes an adequate description of-and how do we account for the process by which skills, hands, instruments, and materials intersect to create a trail of-ink on the paper's surface?Our most habitual actions (psychical or physical) are experienced and become constituted where brain, body, and culture conflate.Yet, finding adequate ways to describe this conflation, even in the simple case of line making, poses a great challenge.2 Where do we start delineating the bound aries of the marks our moving hand leaves on a surface?What kind of mental pro cesses and forms of repre sen ta tion can account for the origins and endings of the simple line we have drawn?Consider three common ways to describe the line.The first way is to think of it as an action: the drawing of a line.The second way is to think of it as an object: a line drawn on paper.The third way is to think of the line as a sign: the index of our moving hand or perhaps the trace of a creative gesture.Ontologically speaking, those three ways of seeing the line are inseparable.Each one of those ways 2 Outline of a Theory of Material Engagement