Matt Ridley explores the Theory of Evolution in Everything from Religion to Politics and the Internet. He highlights how Top-Down thinking such as big Government and Central Banks will fail and strangle sense at birth and it is bottom up thinking that is successful. The same patterns can be observed in all human interactions and Matt Ridley ends his book with the Internet, humanities great chance to shoulder aside the Top-Down thinkers and develope a de-centralised world complete with its own businesses and money. I had many assumptions and beliefs challenged in reading this compelling book, it's written and presented with brio, making readers see what is possible and how evolution will, in the end, bulldoze even the most entrenched of institutions who do not heed Darwin's doctrine.
Like for Like Reading. The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, Adrian Wooldridge & John Micklethwait. Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
| Primary Genre | Popular Science |
| Recommendations: |
We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Acclaimed author, Matt Ridley, shows just how wrong this is in his compelling new book. We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Generals win battles; politicians run countries; scientists discover truths; artists create genres; inventors make breakthroughs; teachers shape minds; philosophers change minds; priests teach morality; businessmen lead businesses; environmentalists save the planet. Not just individuals, but institutions too: Goldman Sachs, the Communist Party, the Catholic Church, Al Qaeda - these are said to shape the world. This is more often wrong than right. 'The Evolution of Everything' is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch, the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Top downery is the source of most of our worst problems in the past - why Hitler won an election, why the sub-prime bubble happened, why Africa lingered in poverty when Asia did not, why the euro is a disaster - and will be the scourge of this century too. And although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends still shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land could be released for nature - these were largely emergent phenomena. So was the internet, the mobile phone revolution and the rise of Asia. In this wide-ranging, highly opinionated non-fiction narrative, Ridley draws on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy and examples drawn from the scientific literature, from historical narratives and from personal anecdotes.
The Evolution of Everything How Small Changes Transform Our World features in the following genres: Popular Science, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, Science: general issues, Mathematics and Science, Recommendations
The Evolution of Everything How Small Changes Transform Our World is available in Paperback
The Evolution of Everything How Small Changes Transform Our World was written by Matt Ridley and published by Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
The Evolution of Everything How Small Changes Transform Our World has 360 pages
£9.89
