THE INEVITABLE SPARK: GENIUS, NECESSITY, AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD
by Thomas Letriche · Fen Press
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About the book
Calculus was found in England, in Germany and, by another road, in closed Japan. Oxygen was discovered three times in the 1770s, and photography was announced twice in 1839. Thomas Carlyle said history was the biography of great men; Herbert Spencer answered that society makes the man before he can remake it. This book argues that each was half right, and says which half. Ranging from the first cities and alphabets through Darwin, Mendeleev, Turing and the Transformer, it shows that conditions decide what will be found and roughly when, while individuals decide its form, its speed and, at the rare outer edge, whether it comes at all. Then it asks what that means for how we educate, fund and protect the people who carry the spark.