Name: Justin's review of The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley
Item: The Evolution of Everything
Rating: 4
Author: Justin

Matt Ridley

The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world. 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. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia, or morality. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. Patterns emerge, trends evolve. Just as skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, and termites build mud cathedrals without architects, so brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching and morality changes without a plan. Although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land can be released for nature—these were largely emergent phenomena, as were the Internet, the mobile phone revolution, and the rise of Asia. Ridley demolishes the arguments for design and effectively makes the case for evolution in the universe, morality, genes, the economy, culture, technology, the mind, personality, population, education, history, government, God, money, and the future. As compelling as it is controversial, authoritative as it is ambitious, Ridley’s stunning perspective will revolutionize the way we think about our world and how it works.

How New Ideas Emerge

The Evolution of Everything

Justin

Hugo Ahlberg

While reading this book by Matt Ridley I found my self questioning a lot of my own opinions around society. The author, who I believe is a rightwing libertarian, does a great job of stringing together his narrative around how the world is less intentionally designed than we perhaps like to admit — but rather the result of an ‘unintended natural selection’. While I’m perhaps not fully convinced yet, I definitely question my thoughts around the role of the state when it comes to education and banks for example. I guess being from Sweden, my thoughts around it tends to be fairly pro-top down, but Matt Ridley makes some really compelling arguments for the opposite. 

“I want to do for every aspect of the human world a little bit of what Charles Darwin did for biology, and get you to see past the illusion of design, to see the emergent, unplanned, inexorable and beautiful process of change that lies underneath.”

Justin &
The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley

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The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley