Denver Rick

Props for taking on this challenge in a novel way

Reviewed: 04-28-21

The tl;dr summary: If you’re into business, marketing, leadership; and the sciences, particularly biology (or at least not afraid of it); and you’re on the journey of “how to become” rather than “how to do”, then this book could be just what you’re looking for. It is not a self-help nor “rake it in” book; it is a reflection of Tom Beakbane’s openness, curiosity, and relentless wondering, “How could this be what it appears to be?”

I came across the book by chance, and am listening to the audio version for the third time as I write this review. Kudos also go to the narrator, Philip Battley, who, like Tom Beakbane, is British. This adds value, as Mr. Battley reads the book with the intonation, nuance, and irony which appears to be part of Mr. Beakbane’s style as a branding and marketing professional.

My enthusiasm for and interest in the author’s thesis is enhanced by my prior study of the work of neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, particularly in her book “How Emotions Are Made” (a work where the title might better be, “Why We Make Emotions”).

What caused me to ultimately choose this book is the inclusion of “consilience“ in the title. Beakbane takes some pains to define and offer scenarios of “consilience”. In fact, it is essentially the first idea in the text. Quoting the top of the Introduction: “Consilience is a paradigm that opens up liberating new ways to think about everything relating to science and the natural world, including human behavior. It is more challenging to undergo than other paradigm shifts because it concerns the human brain, which we use to understand[… well… ]everything.”

Given his premise, I offer this feedback: The book might be better titled, “How We Understand Everything and Why It Matters”.

In summary, Beakbane assists us to comprehend some of the essential distinctions between interpreting and verifying reality (looking from the top-down, as by reductionism); and exploring and understanding reality (looking from the bottom-up, as by synthesis). With this book, the author inspires me by the way he has, over many decades as an aficionado of the natural sciences (educationally), plus as an observer of people (professionally), developed a seemingly telephoto-to-fisheye-to-macro mental lens regarding biology, evolution, complexity, and sociology, and their inescapable interrelations.

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