The Great Mental Models Volume 2 Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Great Mental Models Volume 2

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Zusammenfassung von The Great Mental Models Volume 2

Name: The Great Mental Models Volume 2
Rating: 4.1 (129 reviews)
Author: Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien

Shane Parrish and Rhiannon Beaubien

Physics, Chemistry and Biology

4.1 (129 Bewertungen)

23 Min.

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Physik

Inhaltsübersicht

The Great Mental Models Volume 2
in 7 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 7

What’s in it for me? Discover the science behind social life.

When humans began exploring the Arctic, they encountered a problem: their vessels tended to get stuck in the ice. Ramming your way through didn’t work – in fact, it tended to sink ships. But there was an alternative.

Squeeze a curved bowl from below and it pops up. That’s basic physics. The first boat to navigate the Arctic Ocean, the Fram, had a bowl-shaped shallow hull, streamlined keel, and a rudder that lifted right out of the water. When the ice squeezed the ship, it popped up and sat on top of it.

Using science, in other words, let’s you work with nature. That doesn’t just come in handy when you want to sail to the North Pole, though – it can also help you understand human society and history.

In these blinks, we’ll unpack seven fundamental ideas from physics, biology, and chemistry to create a set of mental models that shed light on everything from the French Revolution to modern warfare and the decline of Latin.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why zebras are fast and Portuguese people don’t speak Latin;
how fleas accelerated the rebirth of European society; and
what the production of bronze and driving a car have in common.

When it comes to social change, mass matters.

Paris, 1905. The cafés are full. Waiters bustle from table to table setting down small glasses of green liquor. The smell of aniseed fills the air.

The beverage being served is absinthe – a fashionable aperitif that became notorious for its potency.

In the early twentieth century, newspapers began running sensational stories about absinthe’s effects. It’s as addictive as opium! It drives drinkers insane! The stories cited the case of Jean Lanfray, a man who murdered his family in an absinthe-fueled rage. People began to campaign against absinthe, insisting that it be outlawed.

Meanwhile, not much was being written about lead, a toxic metal that was used to make the pipes that conveyed drinking water. Lead was present in hundreds of other products, too, from paint to glassware to makeup. But, despite its dangers, there was no campaign to ban lead.

The key message in this blink is: When it comes to social change, mass matters.

The claims about absinthe were bunk. It wasn’t any more harmful than other high-percentage alcohols, and it certainly didn’t drive you mad. But the writing was on the wall after Lanfray’s “absinthe murders.” Switzerland banned it in 1908; France followed in 1914.

Lead was different. The evidence against it wasn’t overstated – it was simply ignored. The Roman architect Vitruvius had warned his contemporaries against putting water in lead pipes around 15 BCE. In the 1910s, the American industrial toxicologist Alice Hamilton provided definitive proof of the dangers of lead exposure. It didn’t matter: lead continued to be added to paints and gasoline well into the 1980s.

So what explains the different reactions to absinthe and lead?

Physics can help us answer this question. Take the concept of inertia, which describes the resistance of objects to changes in their state of motion. Stationary objects remain stationary and moving objects continue moving unless they meet an opposing force like propulsion or friction. Mass matters here. The larger the object, the more force is needed to move or stop it.

Substances like lead and absinthe have a kind of “societal mass,” and the same rule applies. Lead had been used for millennia and “stopping it” – that is, getting rid of it – meant changing everything from how walls were painted to how cars were fueled. Absinthe, by comparison, was a lightweight: it hadn’t been around long and all it did was get people drunk – something other liquors did just as well without appearing to drive men to murder their families. Lead, in other words, had lots of societal mass while absinthe had very little.

Useful things survive and get passed on from generation to generation.

A zebra grazes in the grasslands of southern Africa. Nearby, a lion crouches in the long grass. It crawls forward, stealthily approaching what it hopes will be its next meal. Once it’s close enough, it breaks cover and begins sprinting. The zebra spots it. The race begins.

The stakes are high. A zebra that’s been brought down won’t get a second chance to escape. The rule here is simple: slow zebras get eaten. What this striped equine needs, then, is speed.

Early adaptors come out on top.

The British peppered moth’s wings and body are beige and gray and covered in small black spots – exactly the color and pattern of mottled, lichen-covered tree trunks. That’s handy. Perched on a trunk, the moth is pretty much invisible to predators.

Or rather, it was handy. During the Industrial Revolution, factories began belching out clouds of sooty smoke. Slowly but surely, trees were covered in a thick layer of black grime. Suddenly, the moth’s markings didn’t help it blend into its environment – they made it an easy target.

Catalysts accelerate chemical and social change.

A busy port in Italy, 1340. Dockers are unloading a ship. The cargo is plentiful – a reflection of the wealth generated by the newly opened trading routes between Europe and Asia.

In the hold, a rat sniffs the air. It scratches itself, hops onto a rope, and scurries onto dry land. It carries its own cargo – hundreds of fleas infected with a deadly type of bacteria. Wherever humans are bitten, death follows. By the end of the century, an unprecedented epidemic will have claimed hundreds of millions of lives.

Knowledge is an alloy just like bronze or steel.

Leonardo da Vinci’s thirst for knowledge was boundless. He wanted to know everything.

And there was a lot to learn – so much, in fact, that he jotted down reminders in his journal to keep track of it all. How do you square a triangle? He’d ask a master of arithmetic to show him. How do the people of Flanders walk on ice? His friend Benedetto should know. What about repairing locks, mills, and canals – a specialty of the inhabitants of Lombardy? He’d need to find a master of hydraulics to explain that. The list went on.

You get what you give – in physics as in life.

Norman Bethune wanted to help people. And, in the early twentieth century, there were plenty of opportunities for a gifted surgeon like Bethune to do just that.

Medical services in Bethune’s native Canada were still too expensive to be easily accessible for working-class folk, so he opened a free clinic and advocated for universal health care.

Humans might not be able to live without hierarchy, but they can choose better leaders.

Rural France, 1788. We’re on a farm looking at a chicken coop. It’s easy to see who rules the roost. Some hens have first dibs on food and peck at the rest of the flock. Other hens defer to this avian elite while pecking their inferiors. At the bottom of the pile is the underclass. These hens never peck at others.

Zoom out a little, and you can see that French society looks a bit like this coop. It, too, has its pecking order.

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Worum geht es in The Great Mental Models Volume 2?

The Great Mental Models Volume 2 (2019) is all about the art of making unexpected connections. Rooted in the “hard” sciences, it unpacks core concepts from physics, chemistry, and biology. But it’s not only about electrons, elements, and evolution. The ideas covered in this fascinating intellectual history can also be applied to everyday life.

Wer The Great Mental Models Volume 2 lesen sollte

Lateral thinkers
Scientists interested in a new angle on familiar concepts
Anyone looking for a good mental workout

Über den Autor

Shane Parish worked as a cybersecurity expert for Canada’s top intelligence agency before founding Farnam Street, an organization dedicated to helping people think smarter in an ever-changing world. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, and Forbes. He’s also the host of the Knowledge Project, a podcast that has been downloaded over 10 million times.

Rhiannon Beaubien is a Canadian writer and the author of Alone Among Spies, a novel about spycraft that draws on her background in intelligence. Beaubien is a key member of Farnam Street, where she contributes to its blog and manages the development of the Great Mental Models book series.

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