The Thinking Path - by Steven Johnson - Adjacent Possible

[This is the free edition of Adjacent Possible, a newsletter about innovation (and its discontents) from me, Steven Johnson. This post is part of a series on creative workflows that is normally only available to paid subscribers; if you’re interested in the series, I’ve included an overview of all the installments at the end of this post.] A few years after Charles Darwin moved into Down House, the three-story home in the suburbs of London where he lived with his family for the last forty years of his life, he leased an adjoining strip of land from a neighbor and constructed a gravel path that ran alongside its periphery. Over the years he planted gardens and trees to accompany the oak grove already on the property, which he came to call “Sandwalk Grove.” Almost every day, he walked multiple loops on the path, working through the grand theory of evolution that he developed over the decades at Down House. Today, visitors to the property can retrace Darwin’s steps on what is formally cal

[This is the free edition of Adjacent Possible, a newsletter about innovation (and its discontents) from me, Steven Johnson. This post is part of a series on creative workflows that is normally only available to paid subscribers; if you’re interested in the series, I’ve included an overview of all the installments at the end of this post.] A few years after Charles Darwin moved into Down House, the three-story home in the suburbs of London where he lived with his family for the last forty years of his life, he leased an adjoining strip of land from a neighbor and constructed a gravel path that