Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

The reason we don’t always behave in a way which corresponds with conventional ideas of rationality is not because we are silly: it is because we know more than we know we know.

However, in 2007, William Parker, Randy Bollinger and their colleagues at Duke University in North Carolina hypothesised that the appendix actually serves as a haven for bacteria in the digestive system that are valuable both in aiding digestion and in providing immunity from disease.

‘In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it . . . Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to . . . experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works . . . In that simple sta

The $20 slice of fish that graces plates in high-end restaurants under the name ‘Chilean sea bass’ actually comes from a fish that for many years was known as the Patagonian toothfish.

Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things.

An American fish wholesaler called Lee Lentz had the idea, even though, strictly speaking, most of the catch doesn’t come from Chile and the toothfish isn’t even related to the bass.*

For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel.

After all, as far as we know, every other organism on the planet survives perfectly well without such a capacity.

most moralising works in this way. We react instinctively, before hastily casting about for rationalisations.