So, in some of the blogs through January and February I’ve referenced this book (Range by David Epstein) which I did on audiobook on recommendation from my friend and mentor Professor John Gibson.
OMG this is an extraordinary bit of work and will be arriving at the practice in library binding (my favourite format) so that I can keep it forever and write in the margins and never give that book away and return to it whenever the urge takes me.
The essence of Range is the death of the specialist (I wrote a blog about this recently, you can read it here).
It speaks to me on so many different levels and encourages me and settles the fear I have of being a fraud and being an imposter because I understand that I want to search in every single direction and not constrain myself to looking at one single subject.
I’ve made a life out of finding a little bit about a lot and this book has just reassured me that I was not going in the wrong direction.
It’s so powerful and so well researched and so well referenced that it’s hard to disagree with any of it.
The stories are beautiful, and the writing is wonderful, and the audio description and the audio version is amazing.
This book even explains the importance of analogy which is one of my most important tools that I use at work and in particular when explaining difficult concepts to any of my team but particularly to my patients and particularly my new patients.
The inability to master analogy is a disability which will hold you back in communication in life and analogy can only be made through a range of understanding of different subjects.
Scientific exploration will be killed by ultra-specialism and there is no doubt that this is true once you’ve read this book.
It’s greater than that though.
For young clinicians graduating it tells them that they have to read widely, and they have to obtain huge amounts of experience going forwards in order to survive in a complicated world.
Wicked problems require different solutions, and the world becomes more and more wicked every day.
Reference this book against The 100-Year Life and then you have a format for your children as they head towards secondary school and beyond.
No buts, get the book. It’s amazing!
Blog Post Number - 2644
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