Everything evolves: how new ideas emerge, author: Matt Ridley

This book argues that evolution occurs everywhere around us. It is also the best way to understand how the human world changes as well as the natural world. Change in institutions, artifacts, and human habits is: increasing, inevitable, cumulative, it follows a narrative of events transitioning from one stage to another, it creeps rather than leaps, it has its own automatic momentum rather than being pushed from outside, it has no goal or purpose in mind, and it happens largely through trial and error — the method of natural selection. A large part of the human world is the result of human action, not the result of any human design. It emerges from the interaction among millions, not from the plans of a few. Mat Ridley kills the traditional assumptions that claim that major events and transformations of our era are caused by those in power. On the contrary, our most important achievements develop from the bottom up. The industrial revolution, smartphones, and the internet were not planned, but all of them emerged automatically. Languages also developed through a kind of natural selection, as happens with the emergence of common law. In this wide-ranging and astonishing book, you are about to begin a diverse journey through which Ridley skillfully presents the idea of evolution, rather than design, as the force that shaped much of our culture, technology, and minds, and even continues to shape our future. Number of pages: 464