Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas
Written by Steven Poole
Narrated by Simon Mattacks
4/5
()
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.
Related to Rethink
Related audiobooks
Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Innovator's Cookbook: Essentials for Inventing What Is Next Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hidden Habits of Genius: Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit—Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Make, Think, Imagine: Engineering the Future of Civilization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Scientific Sublime: Popular Science Unravels the Mysteries of the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Six Impossible Things: The Mystery of the Quantum World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Weird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Game Theory: Understanding the Mathematics of Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Data: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Craftsman Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Equations of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creating Things That Matter: The Art and Science of Innovations That Last Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Opticks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Social Science For You
Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spoiler Alert: You're Gonna Die: Unveiling Death One Question at a Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: Journey Through The Human Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hate U Give Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radiolab: Mixtape: How The Cassette Changed The World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
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.”