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The Pattern Seekers
- How Autism Drives Human Invention
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
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The Pattern Seekers
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Publisher's Summary
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 70,000 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' 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.
What listeners say about The Pattern Seekers
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Richard Swann
- 2021-03-19
Required Reading/Listening
Absolutely required reading / listening for anyone who lives or works with neuro-atypical individuals - I’ve learned more from this book than any other source I’ve come across!
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Julianne
- 2023-02-08
Outdated and stereotyped view of autism
A decent read; one of those books with a small handful of insights and far too many fillers and case studies. My biggest gripe with this book is the author’s outdated and far-too-gendered view of autism. The notion that “people on the spectrum like systems, not people” may hold true… to the extent that systems and people are mutually exclusive categories. As a woman with ASD, I contend that they are not.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Hannah
- 2024-01-18
DNF- Do not recommend!!
I got this book on a recommendation because I particularly enjoy the narrator, especially when my own neurodivergent brain needs to quiet down. However, the authors take on human innovation lost me and I checked out in chapter 5 when he claimed Homo sapiens were the only hominid innovators.
Cohen seems to pick and choose his historical facts to suit his hypothesis, rather than adjusting his hypothesis to historical facts. The point where he fully lost me was in discussing Neanderthals, claiming stone tools don’t count as innovation. He seemed to have conveniently excluded the fact that they also fashioned clothing for themselves, softening animal hides through a variety of means and fashioning bone needles to stitch them together.
This level of deliberate fact exclusion will turn off most of the “pattern seekers” he seems to be attempting to describe.
Furthermore, his repeated statement that an autism diagnosis is only useful if the autistic person needs functional support is … horrible? Wrong? Ableist? All of the above? It was that exact idea that prevented so many “functional” autistics from getting a diagnosis until adulthood, leading to wretched childhoods.
If I could give negative stars, I would.
Deeply disappointing.
Do not recommend.
The hypothesis is interesting. The writing, fact exclusion, and ableism is HORRIBLE!!!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
- Thomas
- 2021-04-29
if it worked it might be good
lost audio mid way through 1st chapter, I still want the book but its not there.
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