1.3 THE HAND AS CHARACTER

both body shape and movement, dolphins have a more closely related culture; this is because of similarities in their brains. Likewise, 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras used to think that ‘humans were intelligent because they had hands’.10

1.3 The hand as character

Hands are our identity, they reveal one’s occupation. Everyone has a different character, hence a different hand that reveals it. The police, for example, uses one's fingerprints in order to identify a person. Even smart phones are now able to identify their owner through his/her fingertips. Metaphorically, as well, the hand exposes the character of a person. While shaking hands, for instance, one gets an initial idea of the identity of the person in front of him. As Juhani Pallasmaa puts it, 'hands can tell epic stories of entire lives', 'they have a social role'.11 Furthermore, Betty Edwards, American art teacher and author, writes 'every time you write your name, you have

Figure 4: Types of Handshake. Diagram showing the four basic types of handshake, as described by Allan Pease One is able to initialise an idea about a person through handshaking. Unless both hands are perpendicular to the ground, one is being dominant to the other.

10 Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, Senses of Touch: Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to Calvin, (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 13 11 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2010), p. 27, 29

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