On Oct 7, 9:07 pm, Damien Kick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Perhaps our word "man" (manas) still expresses something of precisely > this feeling of self-satisfaction: man designated himself as the > creature that measures values, evaluates and measures, as the "valuating > animal as such".[1]
Don't both "man" and those words for measurement come ultimately from words for "hand" (similarly to words like "manual", as in labor)? Our clever hands with their opposable thumbs being considered a defining characteristic. And our tool use thus derived. Handspans also having been a common (if imprecise) early unit of measurement (along with forearm-spans, as in cubits, strides, and foot-length, from which the measurement in feet still derives its name). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list