For centuries, a common habit among learning theorists has been to characterize cognitive processes in terms of prevailing technologies. Among the tools and machines that have been used to describe thinking are catapults, hydraulics, telegraphs, telephone switchboards, and, most recently, computers.
The further one goes back into history, the more inappropriate such comparisons seem. And, conversely, the more recent the metaphor, the easier it is to take it as a literal truth. Most of us would find the image of a catapult almost useless as a figurative device to understand learning, whereas we tend to slip uncritically into characterizing the brain as a computer. Consider, for example, commonplace references to learning as acquiring and inputting data, to learning difficulties as problems in brain wiring, to communication as transmission and interfacing, to thinking as processing and compiling information, to memorizing as storing, and to remembering as retrieving and outputting. Despite their seeming reasonableness, one might expect such notions to be a source of amusement to future generations in much the same way that references to other, now eclipsed technologies seem amusing today.
Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara, and Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Engaging minds: Learning and Teaching in a complex world, 2000, pp. 52-3
