Steven Poole - Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas

Think you know a good idea when you see one? Think again.

Rethink is the story of how old ideas that were mocked or ignored for centuries are now storming back to the cutting edge of research, and informing the way we lead our lives. Its the story of Grace Hopper, the programming language pioneer who allowed us to speak to computers; of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the groundbreaking evolutionary theorist whose name became a byword for failure; of Democritus, the laughing philosopher who inferred the atomic foundations of reality just by thinking about bread.

Using compelling examples from the worlds of philosophy, science, technology, politics and business, Steven Poole shows what we can learn by returning to discarded ideas, and considering them from a different perspective. He explains why todays chess grandmasters, quantum physicists and psychologists are mining the last 2,000 years of history for answers to the problems of the present. And he reveals how long-neglected thinkers could transform all of our everyday lives from improving the way boardrooms operate, to inspiring grand projects for social and political change.

Armed with this picture of the surprising evolution of ideas and their triumphant second lives, you will see the world differently and perhaps be better equipped to change it.

Steven Poole is the award-winning author of four critically acclaimed works of non-fiction: Trigger Happy, Unspeak, You Arent What You Eat, and Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower? He has written widely on ideas, culture, language, and society for the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

This book owes much to the advice of Jon Elek, Harry Scoble, Daniel Loedel, and Schuyler W. Henderson. Thanks to Isabelle Mansuy, Jochen Runde, Andrew Pontzen, Galen Strawson, Rupert Sheldrake, Paul Fletcher, Barbara Jacobson, Marlies Cunnen, Iain Chambers, Carl Cederstrm, Tony Yates, Nigel Wilcockson, Nick Humphrey, Lucien Jones, and the staff of the British Library. And particular thanks to Izzy Mant, for all the coffee and everything else.

London, April 2016

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