Replicaters

Just as lifeforms can be seen as vehicles for genes to replicate through, so too can viruses be seen as equally important self replicators, at last to themselves. Ideas or philosophies, past on and down can be seen as replicators interested only in their survival. Often ideas that are wrong replicate and perpetuate themselves. In your own field it is easy to tell which ideas are incorrect self replicators. The obsession with timber movement perpetuated in furniture colleges; certain old jointing systems go unquestioned and are still taught. The focus of learning is on the wrong areas. Up until the 1960s furniture makers were taught in an apprentice trade manner as I was. Since the 1970s craft revival where middle class university class people took an interest a new type of teaching developed. At colleges students were taught a strange trade college hybrid, they wouldn't have been allocated space there if the qualifications were trade based like city and gilds so degrees in designer making, an odd hybrid if ever there was one evolved. There is still a refusal from many who feel themselves above trade on class grounds to accept the tradesman. Often I see better craftsmen on shop fitting projects than on awkward furniture. Further, and this is of interest is how some ideas are passed on badly. We may describe the two types of learning as analogue learning and digital learning. These titles are not literal but serve well. Teaching someone how to use a hammer can be done through demonstration. If the student looks at the principle, not the process they will achieve the desired result. Bang the nail repeatedly until the nail head is flush, that is analogue learning. Bang the nail 7 times, as the tutor did may leave the head proud, digital copying. I submit that mistaking digital learning for analogue learning and vise versa has led to a knot in the tree of developement.