Malcom Gladwell and his excessive reading habits. That's really what Blink, and his previous work The Tipping Point are about. The man is clearly an avid reader and thinker, but a scientist he is not. While he does the amazing thing of channelling science into a story, he fails remarkably to back up what he says.
I had the fortune to read Blink first. Contained in the first chapter is a compelling story that contains a logical fallacy. While this story is not his argument, it's irksome to me as a reader to read something that is clearly incomplete or just untrue, and be expected to just go with it because it makes for a tight passage.
Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to think about in these books, and it takes a writer and thinker of immense talent to distill it into something so easily palatable. I just worry about what was lost to get it.
But it made me think critically, so what else can be asked of it?
2 comments:
I will put him on my reading list... i love the whole 'story within a story'. But you know, it might be a comment in itself... is it?
It is a comment, but it's doing something noteworthy, trying to change our perception of the world around us and challenge the way we tend to understand the world.
It's just clearly trying to see the world in particular ways, and since I think that those ways are incomplete, I feel the lack.
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