Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas
Written by Steven Poole
Narrated by Simon Mattacks
4/5
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About this audiobook
A brilliant and groundbreaking argument that innovation and progress are often achieved by revisiting and retooling ideas from the past rather than starting from scratch—from The Guardian columnist and contributor to The Atlantic.
Innovation is not always as innovative as it may seem. This is the story of how old ideas that were mocked or ignored for centuries are now storming back to the cutting edge of science and technology, informing the way we lead our lives. This is the story of Lamarck and the modern-day epigeneticist whose research vindicated his mocked 200-year-old theory of evolution; of the return of cavalry use in the war in Afghanistan; of Tesla’s bringing back the electric car; and of the cognitive scientists who made breakthroughs by turning to ancient Greek philosophy.
Drawing on examples from business to philosophy to science, Rethink shows what we can learn by revisiting old, discarded ideas and considering them from a novel perspective. From within all these rich anecdotes of overlooked ideas come good ones, helping us find new ways to think about ideas in our own time—from out-of-the-box proposals in the boardroom to grand projects for social and political change.
Armed with this picture of the surprising evolution of ideas and their triumphant second lives, Rethink helps you see the world differently. In the bestselling tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Poole’s new approach to a familiar topic is fun, convincing, and brilliant—and offers a clear takeaway: if you want to affect the future, start by taking a look at the past.
Steven Poole
Steven Poole is the award-winning author of Rethink, Unspeak, Trigger Happy, You Aren’t What You Eat, and Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower?. He writes a column on language for The Guardian, and his work on ideas and culture also appears in The Wall Street Journal, The New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Baffler, The Point, The Times Literary Supplement, Edge, and many other publications. He was educated at Cambridge, lived for many years in Paris, and is now based in East London.
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Reviews for Rethink
8 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While reading this book, I realized I've read several "thinking about how we think" books and have accordingly added a shelf for them.
Refreshing read on revival of ideas though the author would probably point out it's not particularly new to revive ideas or reconsider them. Some positives mentioned- ideas that were only rethought when missing components were found (Lamarkianism & epigenetics), ideas that act as a placeholder stepping stone to other ideas (dark matter in physics), but also negative consequences (flat Earth believers, homeopathy, etc.) - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Free early reviewer book. Malcolm Gladwell, you have many sins to answer for, including the “big idea” book. Here, the overarching idea is supposedly that many ideas aren’t new, but are actually renewals of old ideas, or variants, or old ideas that wouldn’t work in the past whose time has finally come. It’s really, it seems to me, an excuse for the author to write about trends in physics and philosophy that he finds particularly interesting, but I don’t. I did find this line interesting: “the disease model of alcoholism can help a person with alcoholism even if it is not factually accurate: it is a placebo idea.” He ties this to Nietzche’s statement that “the falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it,” a rather more fraught claim when stated that broadly. Tidbits: “hard-core programmers,” which is to say, men, mocked Grace Hopper’s computer language because it was too easy to understand. Also, a statement from the author of The Joy of Sex, articulating something I feel deeply: “I would think that it is more true to say that whether people have the right to produce children depends on the circumstances. What I am sure of is that no other persons have the right to prevent them, which is a different matter.”