There is a common shape that emerges from milled lumber as mass-produced saws cut through varied shapes and sizes of logs, producing the desired square building materials with the dependable straight lines that make repeated conjunctions of materials faster and more dependable, such as in timber framing and other construction disciplines.
What are the desired thicknesses which allow for the most efficient and effective usage of the materials, and what are the thicknesses that, given the natural properties of the material, provide the stability needed to build in the forms desired?
How are all of these things judged and measured? So they presuppose various social modes of measurement and the conventional tools for affecting that measurement, such as measuring tape and levels and all the like.
It is the intersection and the combined pressures of these things: the conventional and wide availability of a given tool and that tool's form, the properties of the materials, the desired forms those materials and constructions take, the efficiency and repeatability of those elements in a greater mass, and all of the rest of it which intersect and provide the emergence for eventual timeworn standards, which are readily seen in the common forms of mass-produced commercial lumber.
And these things appear in the knowledge base. A collective memory is maintained. It then takes less time and energy by cutting out the nearly endless hours of trial and error required for them to emerge. The path of least resistance is taken; a channel is cut.
