"The book is to the brain as the tool is to the hand." -- Paul Otlet #readingToday

Hand tools had helped early humans evolve and progress. Books too were essential to humanity's intellectual evolution. "The book is to the brain as the tool is to the hand." This co-evolution of human intellect and its tools of thought reflected what psychologists today might call embodied cognition. As individuals shared knowledge with each other through speech, writing, and other forms of externalized expression, they developed what Otlet characterized as a kind of collective intelligence— a faculty that allowed groups of people to solve large-scale social problems by working together in networks.

Cataloging the World, Alex Wright