The Pattern Seekers
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Average rating5
15
Ratings2
Average rating5
A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity. Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for seventy thousand years, from the first tools to the digital revolution. How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species's inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social and often medical challenges, so Baron-Cohen calls on us to support and celebrate autistic people in both their disabilities and their triumphs. Ultimately, The Pattern Seekers isn't just a new theory of human civilization, but a call to consider anew how society treats those who think differently.
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Intriguing Theory. Full disclosure up front: I am Autistic, and thus these types of books tend to demand my attention as I attempt to understand my own mind and body. That noted, Baron-Cohen (no apparent relation to the actor of the same surname) here proposes a theory that those who are “high systemizers” - those he defines as people driven by a process many in programming will recognize as a version of Agile Programming - are the ones who have driven human innovation from the dawn of the species. It is a theory that has at least some degree of merit, but perhaps has a few weaknesses that the author omits - though he does make a point of discussing some competing theories, it is possible that there are other explanations that fit at least some of the data better according to Occam's Razor. Still, he makes a repeated point that even those suspected of being Autistic should not seek a diagnosis unless their abilities are somehow causing problems, which is a point that many in the Autism literature - at least that which I have read - fail to make or even contradict, and for that reason alone this book is a refreshing change of pace. (It also opens with one of my favorite quotes, from The Imitation Game - the story of Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science and a suspected Autistic - that “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”)
Overall a a must-read book for those seeking to understand Autistics, as it really does make a lot of very solid points - points that were affecting me nearly as much as my first viewing of The Imitation Game. This is yet another one that I will absolutely be recommending those seeking to work with me professionally read, as it can give them many clues both how to understand me - and how to use me much more effectively. Very much recommended.
