Greater than the sum of the parts
Back in 2004 when I had just completed my first fixed gear conversion my father asked if that was the one that I had assembled. Assembled I thought, how dare he. This was a project that I had overseen. I had built this bike. I had created it. It wasn’t simply a collection of parts from IKEA that I had bodged together with a free allen key. Shocked and dismayed I simply answered yes to the question even though I felt frustrated and belittled inside. I gave him the benefit of the doubt even though what I really wanted to do was to hammer a few six inch nails into his skull.
Assembly?
I make a lot of bicycle wheels. The people that I build them for supply me with the hub and rim. I then calculate the spoke lengths, order the spokes and build them the wheel. But I take the component parts and put them together: isn’t that assembly? But assembly suggests that anyone could do it and clearly not everyone can do it and hence they bring the parts to me. My wife bakes cakes. She gets all the ingredients such as flour, butter, eggs and sugar to create a delicious accompaniment to afternoon tea. Does she simply assemble the cake?
Skill and workmanship
We both take care to choose quality parts and ingredients. But it made me wonder how far back should one go in order to be able to say that one made something. Should I cut the spokes myself and drill the holes in the hub? Should my wife mill her own flour, or even grow her own wheat? This is clearly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. There is skill required in building wheels or baking cakes. And those without the skills can gather the ingredients together without being able to assemble them into the required outcome. Now this is not the skill of a maestro by any means but not something that the average person possesses. So to say that ingredients are some sort of kitform which simply requires following a recipe is ludicrous.
In the above two examples, even though it is not high art there is a creative process and we are proud of our work. We hand it over to our customers who appreciate the work that we have done. And they feel happy that they have enlisted our help. This wasn’t painting by numbers. This wasn’t an Airfix kit or instant noodles. A certain amount of creativity, talent and workmanship went into the production and to say that they were merely assembled is to strip their creators of any merit.
So father dear I beg to differ. I made my bike. I created and built it. I even mined the iron ore and smelted it myself.