Word of the Day

MEME

In 1976, Richard Dawkins, in his iconic book The Selfish Gene, coined the word “meme” for a similar concept:

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”

I liked the reference to "ways of making pots". So you have wood fired pot styles, soda fired black and orange decorations, majolica styles, crystalline styles, etc. And these styles are in facts memes and are passed on either by apprenticeship, books and magazines, person to person or workshops. And now Youtube.  

Pot on!