Clever Geek Handbook
9 January 2026

The Mind of the Market

Recommendation

This is a lively, entertaining, useful and uneven work. Author Michael Shermer ranges over an array of disciplines to synthesize current understanding of the intersection of economics and evolution. He defines and debunks homo economicus, or the economic man, a theoretical creation who behaves in a purely rational fashion. Shermer weaves personal experiences with interviews of researchers, summaries of classic texts, and contemporary experiments and observations of such well-known businesses cases as the Enron debacle. Readers with knowledge of behavioral economics or negotiation will find some familiar material in this book. For others, Shermer’s connections among biology, psychology, economics and ethics will be enlightening. He overreaches at times, making sweeping claims for the power of the market, but you don’t have to agree with every conclusion to enjoy the work. BooksInShort recommends this to readers who are interested in behavioral economics, self-knowledge or the machinations of markets.

Take-Aways

  • The classic economic model depicting human behavior as purely rational is faulty.
  • Better models of economic action and reaction incorporate emotion, values and humankind’s evolutionary roots.
  • People make bad decisions for reasons that made sense in earlier historic eras.
  • Perceptions of the world that were useful to prehistoric humans are now wrong.
  • Economic and evolutionary theory both describe complex systems emerging from the bottom up without a single designer in charge.
  • Economics and evolution differ on how people and societies change.
  • Good rules and good relationships produce good actions.
  • Interpersonal and institutional relationships forge the trust that is essential for marketplace interactions.
  • Most people misjudge what would make them happy. Happiness stems from love, meaningful work, community participation and spiritual practice.
  • To be happy, engage in these things and support a society that allows others to do the same.

Summary

Evolution’s Insights into Economic Man

For too long economics worked with the model of homo economicus. Economists assumed that this “economic man” was purely rational and “selfish, self-maximizing, and efficient” when making decisions. Put that view to rest. Instead, realize that a range of disciplines, chief among them evolutionary theory, have added profoundly to scientific understanding of seemingly irrational choices. Choices that seem irrational in modern industrial societies were quite rational for humans living in tribes, as did the vast majority of early people. “Reciprocal altruism” is an example of the dichotomy. Playing fair and helping others may seem outdated to people in modern industrial societies, but such practices are critically important to small tribes in hostile environments.

“Any theory of economics must begin with a sound theory of human nature.”

The economic lives of hunter-gatherers and modern humans differ greatly. Tribal peoples earned roughly $100 per year. A village might have only 300 material items. By contrast, contemporary “consumer-traders” in New York City average $40,000 per person per year, and their “village” contains “around ten billion” material items. What’s more, this shift in standard of living did not happen gradually, but instead exploded over the past few centuries. On an evolutionary scale, that’s a dizzying pace. Humanity’s brains have not caught up with its circumstances.

“Life, like the economy, is about the efficient allocation of limited resources that have alternative uses.”

For example, some decisions make even greater sense when considered in the context of primate biology, for humans are not the only animals who engage in economic reasoning. They share many economic traits with other primates, like reciprocity and a sense of fairness.

Evolution and economics are both “complex adaptive systems,” in which individual organisms respond to environmental shifts by changing their behavioral patterns. Theorists say that the two systems also share the characteristic of developing over time from the bottom up, rather than being assembled by some grand designer from the top down. Economics evolve as rivals sell an ever-changing mix of products and services in an ongoing contest for limited resources. The free market encourages such competition and may drive higher standards of living.

“The environment is the designspace of evolution. The market is the designspace of economics.”

Most people fail to understand this though, because they make moral and political judgments based on what might be called “folk science.” They take principles that applied in the evolutionary past, and apply them to contemporary economic situations without proper adaptation or understanding. The mismatched results often are bad or even dangerous economic policies. For example, in a tribe of hunter-gatherers, a member who accumulated wealth did so at the expense of others. This is not only morally wrong but is also potentially harmful. Others might starve. However, wealth in a capitalist society comes from very different sources than wealth in tribal societies and arrives often in such abundance that no one has to suffer because someone else is rich. Instead, the opposite is often true.

“The standards set for us by modern society distort our perceptions about what will actually bring us satisfaction because we evolved in an environment radically different from the one in which we now live.”

People also misunderstand evolutionary theory. Misconceptions about Darwinian thought lead many people to believe that evolutionary theory assumes that “humans are inherently selfish” and compete with one another for survival. They do compete, but they also cooperate, which is sometimes the superior survival strategy for both the self and the species. People prefer a social system that permits as much personal freedom as possible while minimizing the destructive consequences of selfishness. Thus far, the best social organization is “a liberal democracy and free market capitalism.”

The Development of Markets

Once a product is established in the marketplace, so-called “path dependency” can take hold. No matter why consumers initially choose an established product or service, they tend to avoid alternative paths to satisfaction, even when other companies produce imitations of established products. An established product also can inspire loyalty among social circles or “social networks” of satisfied users. However, market dominance can be fleeting. Established products may not stay that way. Rival products and standards constantly emerge.

“The first principle of what I call virtue economics is this genetically embedded reflex of reciprocity: When someone gives us something, we feel that we should give something back.”

Pivotal differences “between biological and cultural evolution” relate to their potential for variation. Biological organisms may mutate but they avoid hybridizing with radically different species. By contrast, a change introduced in one industry may suddenly cross-pollinate with a completely different type of industry.

Dissonance, Decisions and Desires

If you strongly believe one thing and have invested accordingly, but evidence clearly demonstrates the opposite and you lose money, you have a dilemma. Rather than resolve this “cognitive dissonance” by objectively identifying the best option, many people rationalize their decisions to avoid admitting that they were wrong.

“In other words, the evolution of moral (or immoral) behaviors came first, the attribution of moral value came later. We really are moral primates.”

People often “filter” their consumption of news to obtain information that confirms their existing opinions. This can be dangerous in the market. This tendency has evolutionary roots. Since humans began their evolution living in small packs of hunter-gatherers, tribe members learned to read one another’s every cue, tracking body language and facial expression with great accuracy based on extended intimacy. This made them highly attuned at telling when someone was lying, which then led to social punishment (such as shunning the liar). Thus, people need to feel they “are doing the right thing” when they speak and to believe fully in their statements, even if it means discarding some contrary evidence.

“Happiness is a subjective state of well-being that depends on relative frames of reference, grounded in an evolved psychology that finds meaning in the simple social pleasures and purposes of life.”

This often leads to poor decision making, and to bias and other distortions in perception. People tend to notice others falling prey to bias and to believe that they can avoid it. Study subjects asked to rank their personal character against others’ usually ranked their own higher. People tend toward a “self-serving bias” to support their belief that they are morally superior to others and better at self-monitoring. They believe that they catch their own biases through introspection while others often fool themselves. Also, people are more likely to give themselves credit for good intentions and to see their own failings as honest errors, while casting the missteps of others as malicious and intentional.

“Cognitive dissonance drives people to rationalize irrational judgments and justify costly mistakes, whether they are end-of-the-world cultists or political leaders.”

A more general flaw in decision making comes from a human tendency to find patterns in things – even when they aren’t there. Related human failings include the “representative fallacy,” a tendency to imbue events with excess importance, and the “availability fallacy,” when people see frequently dispersed or recent information as more credible than other data. In negotiations, this leads to the “anchoring fallacy,” when an initial offer may anchor the rest of a discussion, even illogically. How you frame a question shapes the response as well: People will go out of their way to save $50 on a $100 item, but not on a $1,000 item.

“Humans also have an amazingly low tolerance for economic ambiguity.”

Many failed models of modern economic reasoning made good sense in the evolutionary past. Consider the “endowment effect,” or over-appraising the value of things you own. This refers, for example, to a tendency among some stock owners to value their shares more highly than nonowners do, and to resist selling them. This sort of attachment makes sense for a hunter, who needed to hoard food to survive. In the modern world, though, it leads to the “sunk-cost fallacy,” which keeps people invested in a stock even after their initial reasons for investing in it have evaporated. In general, people seek data that supports their “existing beliefs” and they “ignore or reinterpret” contrary evidence, a tendency called the “confirmation bias.”

Rules, Community and Virtue

Broadly speaking, a society’s organizing rules can develop in two ways. People can establish rules organically and informally, keeping things flexible and basing conflict resolution on social norms. Or they can develop formal, written rules, leading them to resolve conflicts through more formal interactions, such as a legal system.

"The web of trust is cast upon everything we do, and without it, we would be like strangers in a strange land.”

While groups of people can move from one system of organization to another, they can’t do so without consequences. One societal model may be more appropriate than the other, depending on the context. Informal rules work better in smaller communities where members have ongoing social relationships, and share interests and a knowledge base. People interact with each other in a specialized environment on an ongoing basis in enterprises ranging from start-up companies to cattle ranches.

“The point of having moral codes – whether you are a hunter-gatherer or a consumer-trader – is to construct an environment of trust that encourages the expression of moral behavior.”

Formal institutional rules, on the other hand, spread from the top down, and can cross communal and ethnic boundaries. These rules need to be standardized, in part, because they operate separately from human contact. These formal and informal sets of rules can interact. For instance, knowing that the law stands behind them may enable people to make informal agreements with greater trust.

“There is nothing natural about a free economy, and there is nothing inevitable about human groups evolving towards a free market.”

A society that tries to design “markets to be moral” must minimize abuses. The society must nurture trusting relationships among market members, interactions that can flourish under the shelter of the rule of law as “reinforced by social institutions.” The choice is between the ruthless, self-aggrandizing behavior of Enron and the culture of Google, as epitomized by the Internet search company’s explicitly stated code, “Don’t Be Evil.” Success at Google is defined as doing good things for society, not just doing well for shareholders. This is harder than you might think. Tribal ancestry nudges people to align closely with their immediate group and to ridicule notions that outsiders are somehow equal.

Money and Happiness

Various proverbs have long warned that money can’t make you happy, but science has finally confirmed that idea. Economic growth has exploded in recent decades. By every economic measure, people in the U.S. have a higher standard of living now than they did 50 years ago. They also live longer. But their personal experience of happiness is less pervasive for two broad reasons. First, human beings are genetically predisposed to varying levels of happiness. The environment exerts only a limited influence on their happiness. Second, people tend to evaluate their wealth and satisfaction in relative, not absolute, terms. The value of an individual’s improved status is diluted if everyone in his or her “social group” has experienced similar improvement.

Most people misjudge the sources of their happiness as well as the duration of any changes in their happiness. Most people think that more money would make them happier, even if it doesn’t, and that a big change, like winning the lottery or losing a job, would affect their level of happiness for a long time. In reality, most people have a standard level of happiness – a habitual mood – to which they regularly gravitate regardless of outside circumstances. The majority of people also presume that novelty produces more happiness than it really does.

But why feel happy at all? Why feel any emotion? For emotions to have survived as part of the human inheritance, “they must have some adaptive function.” Emotions work with conscious reasoning to guide human action. Emotions associated with depression, for example, can signal a need to make a major change. Indeed, emotions actually are an even better guide to human action than rational thoughts are in many situations. Studies from various disciplines indicate that some factors contributing to happiness transcend rational thought.

The first of these factors is “deep love and family commitment”; the second is a career that means something to you and gives you a “sense of purpose”; third, because humans are “a social species,” community involvement leads to happiness. Finally, people generally need some spiritual practice in their lives, anything – from meditation to religion to art appreciation – that transcends the mundane.

Taken in combination, these tendencies call for some guiding moral principles based on human nature that serve as the foundation of any successful society. Pursuing happiness is good when the result makes someone else happy and bad when it hurts others. Freedom is a worthy pursuit, as well, especially if it leads to greater freedom for others, but unworthy if it encumbers others. Similarly, the decision to “pursue purposeful goals” is especially good if it also lends purpose to others, but bad if conducted at the expense of other people’s dignity and self-worth.

About the Author

Michael Shermer is a columnist for Scientific American and the author of several books including Why People Believe Weird Things.

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The Mind of the Market

Book The Mind of the Market

Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics

Times Books,
 


9 January 2026

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

Recommendation

Oil and other energy resources are the flashpoints of modern world politics, and they will be at the center of future conflicts. Author Michael Klare analyzes energy politics from a global perspective, presenting his points methodically, from continents to nations to oil companies, eventually working his way down to the pipeline routes that deliver the oil and natural gas to consuming nations. Although, because of this structure, the book at times reads like an almanac, the minutiae do not diminish the importance of the story Klare tells. BooksInShort recommends this book to oil industry executives and other serious students of petropolitics.

Take-Aways

  • The U.S. military consumes 16 gallons of oil per soldier per day in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • “Statism” or “neomercantilism” occurs when the state assumes a larger role in energy acquisition than individual companies.
  • The emergence of state-owned and private petrosuperpowers, combined with new energy-related alliances, has made the world more dangerous.
  • By 2030, the world’s top energy consumers will be the U.S., China, Russia and India.
  • China will be the largest consumer, using 20% of the world’s energy.
  • Competition between developed and developing nations will create a new world energy order.
  • The world’s largest network of natural gas pipelines emanates from western Siberia.
  • Natural gas from Russia provides fuel for the former Soviet Union nations, Greece, Austria, Poland, Italy, Germany and France.
  • The Persian Gulf contains two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves.
  • Africa is vulnerable to oil exploitation by foreign companies.

Summary

The Emergence of “Petrosuperpowers”

The world is engaged in an international power struggle over energy, and the competing national interests of developed and developing nations will eventually result in the emergence of a new world energy order. Rising demand and shrinking resources will build new global alliances, many of which will be dangerous and unstable. Nations that deplete their energy reserves will become less important and will lose power to those that are energy and mineral-rich.

“Some analysts believe that Hitler’s failure to capture Baku and its oil reserves represented one of the critical turning points of World War II.”

The strongest countries in the new order will not necessarily be the ones with the most powerful militaries. Rather, to develop strong armies, countries will need oil. The U.S. military has become one of the largest consumers of oil in the world. During World War II, it consumed one gallon of oil per soldier per day. During the first Gulf War (1990 to 1991), that amount increased to four gallons. In the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, demand has hit 16 gallons of oil per soldier per day. A 2007 Pentagon study found that an oil shortage could curtail U.S. military operations worldwide.

“China’s ‘Go West’ strategy has been driven, above all, by sheer need.”

Both developing and developed nations have huge demands for oil. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that by 2030, China will be the largest energy consumer in the world. China is already competing with Japan, the world’s second largest economy, for energy. Both are looking to resource-rich nations such as Nigeria and Kazakhstan. The U.S. remains dependent on Venezuela, which supplies it with 10% of its imported oil, even though Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been a vocal critic of U.S. policy.

“Putin’s dreams of employing Russia’s resource abundance to restore the country’s status as a major world power...are now a distinct reality.”

On a global level, energy supplies are diminishing just as the world population and demand for energy are rising. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that world oil production would have to rise by 57% over the next two decades to meet demand. However, energy experts say that all the easy-to-extract oil has already been found. Getting to additional sources of oil, uranium, coal and natural gas is expensive and dangerous. Renewable energy sources, such as hydropower and wind, will account for only 8% of worldwide energy by 2030.

Power Shifts

The ever-increasing demand for energy has reallocated monetary power. Oil-exporting nations received $970 billion in 2006 alone from importing nations, a three-fold increase on their 2002 takings. Russia and the Persian Gulf countries have become extremely wealthy. They have used their “sovereign wealth funds” (government-controlled investment funds) to purchase large interests in U.S. companies, such as Citigroup, the Carlyle Group and Advanced Micro Devices.

“A surprisingly large share of the world’s current oil production – nearly 50% – comes from just 116 giant fields, each of which produces more than 100,000 barrels per day.”

The emergence of national oil companies (NOCs) in other countries including, Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, is redistributing world power. National oil companies, not private ones such as Chevron, now control about 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves. The NOCs are aligning with one another not only to expand their refining and distribution capacities but also to promote their economic and foreign policies and interests.

“When considering the problem of mature oil-field decline, no country matters more to the supply equation than Saudi Arabia.”

In response, the U.S. and other major nations have exploited their relationships with oil-producing nations. The U.S. moved into former Soviet republics near the Caspian Sea, such as Kazakhstan, when the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations promoted the construction of a 1,040-mile pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan in Turkey. China took a similar approach in promoting a pipeline that would flow east to its own citizens. For both Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, this kind of “resource nationalism” has become a way to advance their political agendas.

The Rise of Statism

“Statism” or “neo-mercantilism” occurs when the state assumes a larger role in energy acquisition than private companies do. While this approach once characterized noncapitalist nations, France, Italy and Japan have all pursued state-run energy policies. In 2001, even the Bush administration said the government should assume a greater role in procuring energy supplies worldwide. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Kazakhstan in 2006 to convince its new president to ship oil to the U.S. rather than to China. The U.S. need for oil has also influenced its policy in Iraq, where U.S. companies want to develop that nation’s oil resources. The global role of the U.S. in procuring energy resources on behalf of its corporations is much greater than is China’s.

The Cases of China and India

Due to their huge populations and aggressive economic expansion plans, China and India have vigorously pursued petroleum exploration and acquisition. China’s average income is nearing $6,000 per year, and its new middle class wants to buy cars. In the 1990s, China encouraged the construction of auto plants through lavish tax breaks and subsidies. Today about 1.7 million people work in the Chinese auto industry. China is also building its infrastructure and, therefore, using more steel, copper and aluminum than any other country. By 2030, the U.S. Department of Energy projects that China will account for 20% of the world’s energy consumption.

“Oil will cease to be primarily a trade commodity, to be bought and sold on the international market, becoming instead the preeminent strategic resource on the planet.”

India is also expanding economically. By 2030, India is likely to have 115 million cars, and the U.S. Department of Energy projects that it will increase its energy consumption 2.8% annually between 2004 and 2030, or three times faster than the U.S. By 2030, the top energy consumers in the world will be the U.S., China, Russia, India and Japan.

“A world of rising powers and shrinking resources is destined to produce intense competition among an expanding group of energy-consuming nations.”

India and China have ambitious expansion plans, so they have competed or, less often, worked together to acquire energy sources. In January 2006, they signed a joint energy cooperation agreement to coordinate bidding, including the possibility of joint bids and exploration. Not to be outdone, Japan has acquired drilling rights in North Africa and the Middle East.

Enter the Russians

Russia began emerging as an energy superpower in 2006, when its production climbed to 9.8 million barrels of oil per day. Led by large energy companies, the Russian economy has benefited from the country’s huge natural gas, coal and oil reserves. It exports more of these resources than it consumes. Of its energy resources, natural gas is the most important, since it provides fuel for the former Soviet Union, Greece, Austria, Poland, Italy, Germany and France, which it serves through the world’s largest network of natural gas pipelines, emanating out of western Siberia.

“In the planet’s new international order, countries can be divided into energy-surplus and energy-deficient nations.”

As Russia developed as an energy provider, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin privatized the nation’s most valuable energy firms, enabling the country to use its resources to leverage itself onto the world geopolitical stage. However, Vladimir Putin later nullified Yeltsin’s privatization policy by nationalizing numerous large oil-producing firms, ousting the Russian “oligarchs” and gaining control of Russia’s major energy companies. He maintained that, with the state controlling the acquisition and use of energy resources, Russia could reconfigure its economy. In 2006, Putin took control of two “production-sharing agreements” led by non-Russian consortiums working on Sakhalin Island. In 2007, the Kremlin forced British Petroleum to sell its stake (worth around $700 million) in the $20 billion Kovykta natural gas field.

“The...‘Great Game’ over energy, with its potential for rivalries, alliances, conflicts, schisms, betrayals and flash points, will be a pivotal...feature of world affairs for the remainder of the century.”

After September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush approached Putin about supplying energy to the U.S. to replace Middle Eastern oil. Putin initially agreed, but soon soured on the idea, and by 2006, dashed any hopes of U.S.-Russian energy cooperation. Russia moved closer to China and turned away from Japan, which had courted Russia in joint ventures – most notably the proposed 2,500-mile-long East Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline, which would run from Taishet, Siberia, to Perevoznaya Bay on the Sea of Japan. Russia reconfigured the pipeline to include a link to a railroad junction 30 miles from the Chinese border.

“For the United States and Europe, the Caspian offers an attractive alternative to the Persian Gulf and its troubles.”

Russia’s other major energy reserve borders the Caspian Sea and includes the newer states of Georgia, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, as well as Russia and Iran. This area’s reserves of oil and gas are not as large as the ones in the Persian Gulf, but they have yet to be fully explored and developed, which makes them attractive to private and state-owned oil companies worldwide – those from the major powers as well as from Turkey, India and South Korea. In the 1990s, Chevron became the first U.S. company to enter this region, followed in 1994 by Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips. The U.S. government, led by President Clinton, then moved to build relationships with the non-Russian Caspian states to counter Russian influence. The high point of this effort was the construction of the 1,000 mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which bypasses Russia and Iran.

“The principal goal of American diplomatic endeavors has been to clear the way for U.S. energy firms by persuading local governments to eliminate unfavorable tax codes, prohibitions against overseas ownership of natural resources and other barriers to foreign investment.”

Under President George W. Bush, U.S. energy companies became partners in area development and played large roles. They pushed to lay oil and gas pipelines under the Caspian Sea. In 2005 and 2006, Bush courted Caspian leaders. This attracted Putin’s attention, and he pushed to include Russian companies in the development consortiums. Despite this flurry of activity, independent oil analysts estimated that the Caspian Sea area will reach peak production in 2009, will stay stable for about 10 years and, after 2021, will produce only enough oil for domestic use. A similar timetable applies to the area’s natural gas supply.

Out of Africa

As in colonial days, foreign companies are eager to exploit Africa’s natural resources, including chromium, gold, diamonds, tantalum, cobalt, copper, platinum, titanium and uranium. However, today’s players include China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia, not European imperialist powers.

“By all accounts, trillions of dollars will have to be invested in new energy forms to make the transition from the existing energy infrastructure to one based on alternative fuels.”

Oil exploration activities have focused on North, East and West Africa. Of these regions, Nigeria has the continent’s largest petroleum and natural gas reserves, while Angola is the sixth largest oil exporter to the U.S. and China’s largest foreign supplier. Many of these nations suffer from significant civil unrest, so foreign oil exploration has recently focused on offshore oil platform projects in the Gulf of Guinea and the South Atlantic Ocean.

Due to Europe’s strong historical ties to Africa, oil exploration companies from France, Norway, Italy and Britain are active on the continent. U.S. companies have focused mainly on West Africa, especially offshore production sites that offer direct tanker routes to the East Coast of the U.S. Since the U.S. Navy protects this route across the Atlantic Ocean, shippers consider it especially attractive. The Pentagon has expanded its military facilities in Africa, with an emphasis on protecting Nigeria, which could account for as much as 25% of future U.S. oil imports.

An “American Lake”

Because of the significant U.S. military presence, the Persian Gulf is often called an American Lake. International competition has challenged American foreign policy makers, who have to balance other countries’ inroads into the area’s oil production and exports against American interests. While U.S. oil companies have played important roles in production, processing and transportation, they have lost ground to local Arab companies. To counter American influence, Russia has expanded its military aid to Iran and Syria, prompting fears of a regional arms race.

Averting Potential Dangers

The emergence of state and private petrosuperpowers, combined with new energy-related alliances, has made the world more dangerous. Among the dangers are reignition of the Cold War; wastage, which could stall the development of alternative energy; and the aggressive use of state power to acquire energy. These activities threaten democracies and increase the potential for economic and environmental problems. In their efforts to become favored trade partners, emerging nations with oil could participate in arms transactions and military programs, increasing political instability in Africa, the Middle East and the Caspian Sea area. To avoid these dangers, countries must cooperate with one another and subordinate their national interests. They should work together to replace dwindling oil resources with alternative energy and to reduce greenhouse gases. This will require new and better relationships among nations, most notably between the world’s largest energy consumers, the U.S. and China.

About the Author

Michael T. Klare is the author of 13 books, including Blood and Oil and Resource Wars. A contributor to Harpers, Foreign Affairs and the Los Angeles Times, he is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College.

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Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

Book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

The New Geopolitics of Energy

Metropolitan Books,
 


9 January 2026

A Briefer History of Time

Recommendation

Stephen Hawking’s first edition of this book came out in 1988. It sold more than 10 million copies, but you might hesitate to try reading it, given the book’s universal ambition. Now, you can pick up this abbreviated, accessible revision with pleasure and anticipation. Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow smoothly explain the most profound questions about the physical world. They illustrate their points with brief stories, analogies and a cluster of images. The result is a compressed introduction to science, physics and cosmology, with sketches of key historical points. Even with clear explanations, the conceptual density can be challenging. Still, it’s the best explanation out there. BooksInShort recommends this highly readable tour through the universe’s most compelling mysteries.

Take-Aways

  • A scientific approach is the best way to understand the physical universe.
  • Scientific theories are models that enable people to make predictions.
  • Humanity’s view of the world developed from a flat world at the center of everything to a rotating sphere circling one of billions of stars in one of many galaxies.
  • Galileo shaped modern science by arguing that people can understand the natural world through observation.
  • Newton explained gravity and the fundamental laws of motion.
  • Einstein’s theory of relativity removed the idea of absolute time, and showed the relationship between space and time.
  • Quantum physics introduced an element of randomness to the human understanding of the universe.
  • The Earth exists in an expanding universe in which time began with the Big Bang.
  • The universe has four major forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.
  • Matter is made up of atoms.

Summary

Look Up in Wonder

Looking at the distant, mysterious stars raises the same questions that your ancient ancestors asked: “Where did the universe come from? Where is it going?” Is there a beginning and will there be an end? What is space and what is time?

As recently as 500 years ago, you could “find people who thought the earth was flat.” Citizens of ancient Greece observed how ships appeared over the horizon a bit at a time. They concluded this fit a round world better than a flat one, on which the entire ship would be visible but very small. The Greeks noted that some lights in the sky moved differently than others. Most followed regular paths; a few doubled back. The Greeks called them “wanderers.” They were the planets.

“The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.”

The ancients constructed models to explain celestial movements. Aristotle argued for a stationary Earth around which the stars and other objects “moved in circular orbits.” Ptolemy posited a model of the universe as nested, moving spheres. The stars were stationary on these spheres, but the planets moved, thus explaining their wandering. This flawed model was “fairly accurate” at predicting celestial motion. In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus argued that the planets moved around the sun, not the Earth. Most people rejected this truer model for another 100 years, until Johannes Kepler’s and Galileo Galilei’s observations gave it weight. In 1687, Isaac Newton explained why the planets moved around the sun in his Principia, “the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences.” Newton articulated the laws of motion, identified and named gravity, and explained the math that governed it.

Scientific Theory and Fact

To discuss the great questions of the universe, you need to understand “what a scientific theory is.” Scientific theories provide models of the universe. They come with “a set of rules” about how aspects of the model relate to what you see in the physical world. Good theories “accurately describe” many observations and let you make “definite predictions” about what you will observe. Empedocles theorized that the world was made up of “four elements: earth, air, fire and water.” However, his notions did not let Aristotle make any predictions and so they do not qualify as scientific theory. “Newton’s theory of gravity” was even simpler. It argued that all physical objects attract one another, based on a specific force determined by their mass and the distance between them. This single theory enables highly accurate predictions about celestial movement.

“We live in a strange and wonderful universe. Its age, size, violence and beauty require extraordinary imagination to appreciate.”

All scientific theories are “provisional.” No one can prove them out, no matter how many experiments show confirming results. A single contradicting observation can disprove a theory. The more times a theory has been confirmed, the more people trust it. New theories often extend and modify existing theories, but don’t disprove them. Consider Albert Einstein’s and Newton’s theories. Newton’s theories predicted the planet Mercury would move one way; Einstein’s theories predicted a slightly different motion, which observations confirmed. Despite this confirmation, Newton’s theories continue to have wide acceptance because they describe most of the situations people encounter, and are easier concepts to grasp and utilize.

Galileo and Newton

Galileo played a larger role than any other person in creating “modern science.” He was one of the first thinkers to argue that humans could “understand how the world works” by observing nature. He suffered the Catholic Church’s Inquisition and arrest for his ideas. He helped provide an alternative to the dominant Aristotelian model of the physical world, which argued that objects had natural states of being “at rest,” and that things moved only if something else forced them to. In this model, heavier objects should fall faster than lighter ones. Galileo demonstrated this was incorrect by rolling “balls of different weight down a smooth slope.” The balls increased their speed by the same rate, regardless of their size.

“Our present ideas about the motion of bodies date back to Galileo and Newton.”

Newton built on these observations for his “laws of motion.” Newton’s first law argued that any object that does not experience some outside force would keep going “in a straight line at the same speed.” His second law said if an outside force does interact with objects, the objects would change their speed at a rate “proportional to that force.” Newton articulated a theory of gravity that identified a specific equation: Objects attract one another “with a force proportional to the mass” of each. Newton showed that gravity grows weaker as two objects grow farther apart.

“Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science.”

A key distinction between the Aristotelian and the Galilean/Newtonian model is that “Aristotle believed in a preferred state of rest.” Thus, the Earth is “at rest” or stationary. Newton’s laws demonstrate that no such state exists. This distinction matters, because it leads to the conclusion that the universe has no “absolute standard of rest.” This holds tremendous implications for physics, because it negates the idea of “absolute position.” Observers can see things differently in the physical world and never resolve their differences. Aristotle and Newton agreed on a single “absolute time” that scientists could measure; this belief lasted until the 20th century.

Living in Einstein’s Universe

Understanding light is central to understanding Einstein’s theories of relativity. As early as 1676, astronomical observations of Jupiter’s moons led to the recognition that light has a “finite but very high speed.” In 1865, physicist James Clerk Maxwell articulated “Maxwell’s theory” of “the propagation of light.” His equations unified the “partial theories” that previously explained magnetism and electricity. He showed that “wavelike disruptions” move through electromagnetic fields, and he calculated that they traveled at the speed of light. This speed was fixed – that appeared to contradict Newton’s position that “there is no absolute standard of rest.” To reconcile these theories, scientists introduced the idea of the “ether,” a hypothetical substance that filled apparently empty space as light waves moved through it. In 1877, the “Michelson-Morley experiment” disproved the existence of the ether by observing light moving at uniform speeds independent of the Earth’s position. Science needed a new answer.

“Einstein’s theory of general relativity is based on the revolutionary suggestion that gravity is not a force like other forces but a consequence of the fact that space-time is not flat, as had been previously assumed.”

In 1905, Einstein demonstrated that you didn’t need the idea of the ether if you were willing to give up “the idea of absolute time.” His “theory of relativity” indicated that scientific law governs everything, including Maxwell’s theory. “According to the theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.” This seems straightforward, but carries profound implications. Space and time are no longer separate, but instead are part of a single unified concept of “space-time.” Rather than occurring at a specific and absolute time, events in time are similar to those in space. As you can describe the position of any object in space with three coordinates, so you identify the position of an event in space-time with four coordinates.

“In order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss such questions as whether it has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is.”

Relativity also established an equivalency between “mass and energy,” as summed up in Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc2.” In this equation, “E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light.” However, this theory of “special relativity” contradicts Newton’s assumptions on gravity. Einstein did not address this point until 1913.

“It is possible to travel to the future. That is, relativity shows that it is possible to create a time machine that will jump you forward in time.”

Einstein’s theory shifted the scientific understanding of gravity. It postulated that instead of being a force like magnetism, gravity was a product of the fact that space-time is curved: The energy and mass distributed within it warps it. This general theory of “relativity predicts that gravitational fields should bend light,” as a United Kingdom expedition in Africa observed in 1919. General relativity also predicts that time runs at different rates depending on the proximity to mass: If you are closer to the Earth’s surface, time runs more slowly than if you are far above it. These theoretical shifts fundamentally changed humanity’s understanding of the physical universe.

“According to the theory of relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.”

Before Einstein, you could regard the universe as unchanging. Things happened in it, but events did not fundamentally affect the objective universe of space or time. Now, both time and space are perceived as “dynamic qualities.” When an object moves, it changes how space and time curve, and this curvature changes how things move and act. Because Einstein’s theories eliminate the idea of absolute time or space, they open the door to intriguing possibilities, such as building time machines and using “wormholes” – shortcuts in space – to reduce drastically the immense distances space travel requires.

An “Expanding Universe” of Wonders

The Earth’s sun is part of a rotating spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. In 1924, astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the Milky Way is one of many galaxies and that tremendous tracts of “empty space” separate the galaxies.

“With the advent of quantum mechanics, we have come to recognize that events cannot be predicted with complete accuracy: there is always a degree of uncertainty.”

Hubble calculated the distance to these galaxies indirectly. He found similar stars in distant galaxies and estimated their distance based on their luminosity. When something glows, it emits a specific spectrum of light according to how hot it is. Starting in the 1920s, astronomers studying stellar spectra noticed that some colors they expected to see were missing. The light had “shifted toward the red end of the spectrum” because the stars move away from Earth. The farther away a galaxy, the more red-shifted its light appears from Earth. That means that the more distant a galaxy, the faster it is moving away. The entire “universe is expanding.”

“Because theories are always being changed to account for new observations, they are never properly digested or simplified so that ordinary people can understand them.”

Will the universe continue to expand? Will it stop and collapse back on itself? Or will expansion slow to a near stop? If you run the expansion backward, you get a highly compressed universe and a point where time as we know it began – the Big Bang. By one second after the Big Bang, the universe’s temperature dropped “to about 10 billion degrees Celsius.” The particles in the universe had “so much energy” that collisions between them produced many pairs of particles and antiparticles. One hundred seconds after the Big Bang, the temperature dropped to about one billion degrees, cool enough for atomic nuclei to form. These atoms are comprised of smaller “elementary particles”: “electrons, protons and neutrons,” which are in turn made up of “smaller particles called quarks.”

“Any physical theory is always provisional...it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it.”

Scientific understanding advanced so markedly and was so successful in explaining the universe that some 19th-century thinkers said “the universe was completely deterministic.” The Marquis de LaPlace held that if you knew the “complete state of the universe at any one time,” understanding natural laws would let you predict everything else that would happen. This model was popular in the scientific world until the start of the 20th century, when analyses of how it would explain stellar radiation led to the conclusion that a star would have to radiate infinite energy.

“It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go.”

Max Planck proposed an alternative model of light, saying that radiating bodies could emit energy only “in certain discrete packets,” or “quanta.” One quantum of light is a “photon.” Quantum physics works in terms of probabilities, not Newtonian certainties, thus introducing a constant element of randomness. “With the advent of quantum mechanics, we have come to recognize that events cannot be predicted with complete accuracy: there is always a degree of uncertainty.”

Fundamental Forces

Contemporary physics seeks a “complete unified theory of the universe.” Any successful unified theory must integrate the fundamental forces governing interactions between particles. Science has identified four of these forces:

  • “Gravity” – Gravity is a “universal” force: All particles feel it by “mass or energy.” Although “gravity acts over great distances,” it is by far the weakest of the four forces.
  • Electromagnetism – “Electromagnetic force” affects only charged particles, like quarks or electrons: It does not affect “uncharged particles” like neutrinos. Electromagnetic force, which is 1042 times stronger than gravity, exists in two forms: positive and negative charges. Two positives repulse one another, as do two negatives. In large objects, the positive and negative charges are roughly balanced.
  • “Weak nuclear force” – You encounter gravity and electromagnetism daily, but not this third force. Weak nuclear force is responsible for “the decay of atomic nuclei.”
  • “Strong nuclear force” – This strongest force operates invisibly in daily life. It holds quarks together within neutrons and protons. Without it, the repulsion between positively charged protons within nuclei would blow apart every atom above the size of the hydrogen atom – which has only one proton.

About the Authors

Physicist Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, was generally considered to be the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Albert Einstein. Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018. Physicist Leonard Mlodinow wrote Feynman’s Rainbow and The Drunkard’s Walk, among other books.

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A Briefer History of Time

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