The cumulative advance of human know-how

Modern humans possess an enormous amount of ‘know–how’ that enables them to do things that early humans could not dream of doing. This paper explores some promising connections between two bodies of empirical research and theorizing that bear on technological know–how and its advance. Cognitive science is concerned with the nature and mechanisms of human knowing. The focus traditionally has not been on the knowledge involved in complex technologies, nor on the processes through which human know–how has advanced over time. However, certain recent developments in this field provide a nice linkage with the implicit cognitive theorizing used by scholars who study the advance of technology. And a number of the debates in the two fields are similar.