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    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge

    Written by Matt Ridley

    Narrated by Steven Crossley

    4.5/5

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    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateSep 24, 2015
    ISBN9780008121372
    Unavailable
    The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge
    Author

    Matt Ridley

    Matt Ridley's books have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages and won several awards. His books include The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and The Evolution of Everything. His book on How Innovation Works was published in 2020, and Viral: the Search for the Origin of Covid-19, co-authored with Alina Chan, was published in 2021. He sat in the House of Lords between 2013 and 2021 and served on the science and technology select committee and the artificial intelligence select committee. He was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He created the Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, and was a columnist for the Times 2013-2018. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Northumberland.

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    Reviews for The Evolution of Everything

    4.5/5

    13 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Amazing Ns dj she is di she die if d
    • 5/5
      Great book about innovation. Short version, nearly all innovation is bottom up.
    • 4/5
      An argument about sponteous order in economics and society - a libertarian or neo-liberal tract about free markets and limited government.
    • 5/5
      This is a fascinating and thought provoking book. Like any book, the author has his views which are supported by facts, however there are of course opinions throughout.

      I may not agree with everything, but this book is not about agreeing, it is about listening, reflecting and seeing the evolutionary aspect to all things.