Chimpanzees, Wasps and Functionless Functionality

When is a tool, not a tool? Appar­ently when it is a quasi-tool or a proto-tool. A tool provides func­tion­less func­tion­al­ity. These were a couple of the epi­gra­mat­ics Barry Allen shared dur­ing a talk on tech­no­logy, cul­ture and civil­iz­a­tion.1 I could not pos­sibly do justice to philo­soph­ical reflec­tions on the nature of a tool, so …