The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge

“Mr.

Ridley’'s best and most important work to date…there is something profoundly democratic and egalitarian—even anti-elite—in this bottom-up approach: Everyone can have a role in bringing about change.” —Wall Street JournalThe New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our worldHuman society evolves.

Change in technology, language, morality, and society is incremental, inexorable, gradual, and spontaneous.

It follows a narrative, going from one stage to the next, and it largely happens by trial and error—a version of natural selection.