Big questions, muddled answers

Human The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking Michael Bhaskar (Hachette, £20)

Kit Wilson is a London-based writer

AFTER CENTURIES OF acceleration, humanity is stuck. Genuinely world changing innovations — the aeroplane, vaccines, electricity — are fewer and further between. Art is stale and derivative. Everywhere, we’re fast running out of big ideas.

Michael Bhaskar thinks we can stop the stagnation. In , he argues that ours is a mire largely of our own making: the result of small-minded mistakes like short-termist politics, box-ticking universities, and growing self-censorship. With a bit more vim and imagination, all can be overcome. Even seemingly intractable problems — the limits of the solved, Bhaskar says, thanks to breakthroughs in quantum computing, artificial intelligence and nuclear fusion.