The Hidden Half
The Unseen Forces that Influence Everything
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
Uncover the unseen forces that shape our world.Why does one smoker die of lung cancer while another lives to 100? Michael Blastland reveals the answer lies in "The Hidden Half"—those random, unknowable variables that confound our attempts to understand the world. This insightful exploration challenges our overconfidence in expertise and exposes the limitations of human knowledge.
Is this popular science for you? If you seek to:
Improve decision-making in the face of uncertaintyNavigate complex systems with greater awarenessDevelop critical thinking skills to challenge assumptions
Then, delve into compelling stories from economics, genetics, business, and science that demonstrate how easily we lose sight of the unexplainable. The Hidden Half is a provocative warning that explanations which work in one arena may fail in another, urging us toward intellectual humility and a more nuanced view of reality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British radio broadcaster Blastland (The Norm Chronicles) takes a wide-ranging look at the limitations to the human ability to understand the world through data. Challenging received wisdom across a broad swath of disciplines, he begins with biology, focusing on marmorkrebs, a recently discovered variety of crayfish who can reproduce asexually, via unfertilized embryo. The scientific assumption is that these animals' offspring, if all raised under the same conditions, would be identical to each other, but that has not proved the case. Nature and nurture have their say, Blastland contends, but there is another, as yet unknown, group of factors with equal sway. Elsewhere, he observes that "nearly 90% of... peer-reviewed findings did not appear to stand up" and that "maybe 40% of continuing medical procedures are either useless or positively do harm." Venturing outside the realm of science and medicine, Blastland comments on how few professional economists or political analysts accurately predicted, respectively, China's post Tiananmen Square rise or Donald Trump's 2016 electoral victory. Calling for "uncertainty... to be reclaimed from the cynical to become a weapon of the responsible," this excellent work makes a convincing appeal for intellectual humility in the face of the unknowable.
