The Knowledge Illusion:
Why We Never Think Alone
by Steven Sloman (Author),
Philip Fernbach (Author)
Humans have built hugely complex
societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a
toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little?
Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive
and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community
of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around
us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our
heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with
which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
The human mind is both
brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions,
stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone,
sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of
intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we
really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and
why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail.
But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. This book
contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using
the community around us.
