This is a set of ideas based around the question "What would it take to arrange things that would design themselves?"
You should probably read this in the opposite order than that in which I wrote them. Read about bridges which design themselves, then read about the general development context in which that is framed, and then if you are interested, you might want to delve into the more complex linguistic questions arising from this.
One inspiration of this idea is the approach taken by the Catalan architect Gaudi in developing complex arch structures using weighted chains (catenaries). I was originally turned on to the idea by a throwaway reference in a sales document for Rational Rose, which claimed that the rose window in Gothic cathedrals functioned as a sort of DNA which contained the information needed to built the entire structure. Confirmation of that idea remains elusive, though there are hints that both the Gothics and certain Renaissance architects used some kind of genetic information in their constructions. For example the Florentine architect Brunelleschi used a chalk diagram on the floor of the Doumo cathedral in Florence to specify how bricks were to be laid for the self-supporting dome of that cathedral.
I decided to explore this idea further, using language from Richard Dawkins's book, The Devil's Chaplain (1991), to define two types of construction or engineering: the familiar blue-printed approach, which Dawkins calls "Preformationistic", in which a design is manifested in some specification or blueprint and then built, versus what he calls the "epigenetic" approach in which a set of instructions, such as the recipe for a cake, is followed in order to arrive at the completed artefact, but that complete item is expressed for the first time in the item itself and not in any design or blueprint. This is the approach seen in nature, where the DNA for a living organism does not contain anything like a miniature copy of that organism, but instead contains the instructions which lead to its formation. I wanted to see if this approach might be used in engineering and design, using buildings as examples because they are easy to think about, but also considering how this might be applied to electronics, electrical engineering, manufacture and so on.
Note that the usage of the words "epigenetics" or "epigenesis" here are different to another well-known usage of the same word. That other usage describes the transmission in natural organims of information which is not encoded in the organism's DNA. In the ideas explored on this site, the usage given in Dawkins (1991) is followed.
One motivation for taking this forward was the African context, specifically in Zimbabwe, where many of a country's skilled and highly qualified engineers reside outside the country but there is motivation to kick-start economic and engineering development within the country. Could the separation of instruction from design provide a means to accelerate development in developing countries, in a way that would be owned and driven by people from that country? Recent trips to Kenya and Tanzania have reinforced in my mind the potential for this approach, and so I have dusted off my original writings on this and tried to bring them up to date and consider broader applications of these principles
This site covers informal study papers I've written to explore these ideas.
The third paper (first one written) sets out a possible alternative approach to construction and engineering for projects in which many of the skills required are available only remotely to the project itself. The basic idea is based on a possibly fanciful idea of how Gothic construction projects may have been carried out, and in particular the role of the rose window. The paper sets out an agenda to explore the possibilities that buildings (and by extension other forms of engineering) may be carried out using a sort of genetic "seed" rather than via blueprints.
The second paper takes a broader look at some possible scenarios in the context specifically of a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe or other developing countries (updated for broader applicability). The ideas set out in the first paper form one part of this, and some of those ideas are developed further, along with approaches for verification and validation of works carried out.
The most recent paper explores an example of one specific kind of epigenetic construction approach, the use of full-sized catenary arches to simulate load weightings for dynamic design of arch profiles. This is intended to be a classic illustration of the epigenetic approach which is developed in the other papers.
Disclaimer: These papers are very much a "work in progress" and are not written to the standards I would consider appropriate for a completed academic paper. They are replicated here in order to give some visibility of this work going forward
I have since developed (on paper only) a number of examples of this approach. When time allows, I will try and scan or diagram these into a computer-readable format.