Knives and the Modern World

Halbie

Halbie

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Just wondering...

But, maybe, we like knives because even when mass produced, they either remind us of the world we grew up with or stand in stark contrast to everything else we buy today. They're basic, essential things that are real and purposeful and have an affinity for the hand.

But, when they're special, they're really special. Life savers or works of art, or both. How many things can you say that about?

Now, back to Family Guy. Meg is having a socio-sexual crisis and Peter is making jokes about it... Let's watch... :)
 
Halbie said:
Just wondering...

But, maybe, we like knives because even when mass produced, they either remind us of the world we grew up with or stand in stark contrast to everything else we buy today. They're basic, essential things that are real and purposeful and have an affinity for the hand.

But, when they're special, they're really special. Life savers or works of art, or both. How many things can you say that about?

Now, back to Family Guy. Meg is having a socio-sexual crisis and Peter is making jokes about it... Let's watch... :)
Click to expand...

The unfortunate fact is that most people don't like knives. They don't necessarily DISLIKE knives, they just don't care about them. They don't think about them or consider them for what they are, or represent.

If they need one, they go find one, or more usually, do without. They don't care about workmanship, or materials, or anything else in that vein. Knives are just objects.

To the folks who frequent this type of forum, though, knives represent a lot of different things. But we spend a lot of time thinking about them and talking about them, considering this aspect or that design feature.

The unfortunate fact for US is that we don't get to use our knives nearly enough, IMO. :(

Andy
 
There is something classic about them. A good knife is meant to be used and will last longer than it's owner. They are not disposeable and they aren't made obsolete by new software.
 
USSR said:
There is something classic about them. A good knife is meant to be used and will last longer than it's owner. They are not disposeable and they aren't made obsolete by new software.
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I would seem that something that has been around since... well... we were around, would have some appeal.

Time line:

Humans
Knives
Spears
Drums
Dogs
..
..
..
Britney Spears
 
Bottom Line knives came into existance as a tool to make our (Humans) lives easier. I am a firm believer that each and every one of us has a survival instinct within us. Some it is just closer to the surface then others. People like myself and I am sure most of the members of this forum who hunt fish and camp and have spent a good amount of time outdoors are more at home with tools like the knife or the firearm. The folks that freek out when they see someone pull a knife out of their pocket at work or in public will need a little more time to get back to basics. I do what I got do and I don't worry about what others do unless it is effects me directly...Now excuse me, I have to go find something pointy to open this wine bottle...
 
From a functional standpoint you see much of this in everyday persons choice of tools. Twenty years ago pretty much everybody had a 'good' full set of screwdrivers, wrenches and sockets. Now days you are hard pressed to find somebody with nothing but one of those $2 screwdrivers with the bits stuck in the handle. Wrenches? Forget about it. Bottom line is most consumer goods aren't considered fixable things. You buy a new one or take it to the shop. My neigbhor takes his bike into the bike shop whenever he wants something done.

Knives are a bit of a by-product of this. At the very least, everybody still owns a couple of kitchen knives. At the very least people do use one regularly (at least in their kitchens) even if they often confuse dullness with safety. I can take pretty much any anti-knife family member, show them a bark river kitchen knife and they immediately appreciate it as a thing of functional beauty. Just can't let them know what the price is. If I show them a snap-on wrench and a dollar store wrench they would be disinterested in both.
 
Knives, more than anything else, are what separate man from the animals.

There, in the rest of the animal kingdom, only a few weak examples of tool use. A sea otter, for example, will sometimes use a found rock to pound open the shell of a shellfish it's caught for its dinner. There are monkeys that will throw found sticks and rocks at an attacking enemy. There are even anteaters which will pick up a found stick, strip off the branches and leaves, and then dip the stick into an ant hill. The ants will crawl on the stick as ants will do and the anteater can then lick them right off of the stick; anthropologists sometimes cite this as an example of tool making, but it's a very weak example, if you ask me.

Man's first tool was probably some sort of pounding instrument, maybe a rock. Maybe man pounded on a shellfish with a rock to open the fish up and get the tasty contents.

The natural world is full of natural knives. Rocks break leaving sharp edges. Man's first knife was probably such a sharp shard of rock. No other animal has ever picked up one of these naturally-sharp shards of rock and used it as a tool, not one.

If we accept as tool use the otter pounding on the shellfish, if we accept as tool making the anteater stripping the leaves off of a stick, then it is here, at cutting tools, that man is separated from the rest of the animal kingdom. It is our unique use of edged tools, of knives, that makes us different from the beasts.
 
Good sharp knife is something like a minimal development environment of programs.
Fist, we have to lean about them. Once learned, they do what they have to, and we can
make various useful things with them.
Sometimes, improvisation is essential.
 
Knives far predate humans.

Stone knife-like tools made by knapping are known to have been in use as early as almost 10 times as long ago as the rise of homo sapiens (2.4 million years v. 250,000 years). More sophisticated tools (Acheulean) started appearing 1.5 million years ago. By 1 million BC we see the formation of whole rocks into repeated tool forms with bifacial edges. These pre-humans were not just hitting rocks until they decided that they looked good; they started with a design (either common or "custom"), found an appropriate rock, and formed the rock to fit the design. In other words standard cutting tool design and manufacturing was common long before we existed.

2004-10.object_of_the_month.jpg



Knives have been a fine human tradition since the very first of us.
 
Knives have that "thing" that few other objects do, its not the same with guns, cars, or jewlery. They just have a special something, we all know the feeling holding a well made razor sharp knife gives us :p

:thumbup:
 
Gollnick said:
Knives, more than anything else, are what separate man from the animals.
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There are a number of candidates for this, but what I think separates humanity from the rest of the animals is superstition and meaningless rituals. Knives is good, though :D.
 
According to Forbes survey in 2005, knife is the most important tools in human history. Besides, Chimps started using spears .. they might use knife soon (some they make, some they found from people who lost theirs)
 
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