Saying yes slowly is what’s hampering progress today

One of my long-held beliefs is that evolutionary biology should be taught extensively in schools. There may be some objections from religious fundamentalists, but these are silly. Evolution does not tell you anything about whether or not God exists; it simply proves that, if he does exist, he really hates top-down central planning.

In any case, it would pay to teach evolution in schools even if evolution were not true — for the simple reason that by understanding evolutionary mechanisms, you are gifted with an entirely new way of looking at the world. In the words of the computer scientist Alan Kay: ‘a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.’

Like cryptic crosswords and detective fiction, which I also recommend for the brain, evolutionary thinking trains you to look beyond the obvious surface explanation (‘It’s an open and shut case,’ said Inspector Lestrade) to the alternative readings hidden beneath. As such it pays off twice: it aids creative problem solving and it makes you less dogmatic, because you come to recognise that the same problem can have more than one possible solution, and that, in this system, failure is not a bug but a feature.

In How Innovation Works, Matt Ridley brings the mind of a biologist to the very vital question of innovation, an area of human activity which, though ‘exogenous’ to most economic models, inarguably drives the greater part of economic growth, and an even greater proportion of the improvements in our living conditions. (I mean, would anyone prefer to live in an economy where GDP was 10 per cent higher but with Victorian dental anaesthetics? I doubt it.)

Understanding evolution helps you see things backwards. For some reason, we tend to overestimate the role of intent and teleology in explaining things.