Matt Ridley
For a while now, I have believed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is the most paradigm-shifting idea to have emerged from a human mind. On a related thought journey, I have also shifted from determinism to free will and back to determinism, all in a few years. This book connects both these thoughts, and is fundamentally an argument for evolution and against creationism. It argues that change is incremental and emergent and has a momentum all of its own, as opposed to the idea that it is directed by a person or a metaphysical force like God.
The author calls Darwin’s work “the special theory of evolution” because Darwin had applied this to the evolution of the human species. But as per the author, evolution is all around us, in pretty much everything we encounter – from culture to the universe and from money to population. The book covers sixteen subjects and sees the progress (or sometimes, the lack of it) for each of these through the lens of its evolution. It is fascinating to see how the blind hand of evolution has guided these ideas to where they are now. I say blind because it has no goal in mind and works mostly based on trial and error.
I learned many things from this book beyond the excellent basic framing of evolution in the context of these subjects. About Titus Lucretius and his book De Rerum Natura (The Nature of things) in which he had conceptualised the idea of evolution. About how the role that history credits to one man – whether it is Steve Jobs or Adolf Hitler – is hugely exaggerated because if there is an idea whose time has come, evolution will make sure it manifests – “the sea will fashion the boats”. About my mistaken notion that science needs to be funded by government – the portion on technology shows how the returns from private funding trumps public grants.
I also learned that while the Nazis are the ones who blew up eugenics into a completely different level, from 1932 to 1970, ten thousands of people in the US had been forcibly sterilised or persuaded to undergo voluntary sterility. That Indira Gandhi was forced to scale up her government’s sterilisation programmes because the “civilised nations” held aid money to India as ransom. About a company called Morning Star Tomatoes that has been experimenting with “self management” for 2 decades and is working just fine. That the government and the mafia have essentially the same roots. That the biggest religions of the world had borrowed their origin myths from a common pool and had gotten lucky with timing. On how environmentalism is now close to being religion and has its myths too! It also validated my view (not original) that both nation states and a central currency were ideas whose exit time has come. I came to know that the roots of the 2008 crisis lay in China!
This is a fascinating book, and I am also awed by the author’s knowledge and background work on so many diverse subjects. This goes very easily into my all time top 10 and I would highly recommend it.
