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Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

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Derek Thompson

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“From my heel to my toe is a measured space of 29.7 centimetres or 11.7 inches. This is a unit of progress and it is also a unit of thought. 'I can only meditate when I am walking,' wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the fourth book of his 'Confessions', 'when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.' Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal entry describes going out for a wander and finding himself 'so overwhelmed with ideas' that he 'could scarcely walk'. Christopher Morley wrote of Wordsworth as 'employ[ing] his legs as an instrument of philosophy' and Wordsworth of his own 'feeling intellect'. Nietzsche was typically absolute on the subject - 'Only those thoughts which come from 'walking' have a value' - and Wallace Stevens typically tentative: 'Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around the lake.' In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing.”

PhilosophyTruthMeditationWalkingThought
Book:The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
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“Monotheism and an absolute God define one another. The absolute is a mental construct, an abstract mental model. The absolute, whether it is a purest abstract essence or an extreme abstract measure, only exists in our minds as an abstraction. Furthermore, the absolute will only lead to the abandon of all measure and blind us to the relative interdependence of all things. The measure of knowledge of life is the knowledge of the measure of this relative interdependence.”

PhilosophyGodReligionThoughtConfusionAbsoluteAbstractionInterdependenceMonotheism
Book:The Human Consensus and The Ultimate Project Of Humanity
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“One cannot walk in such regions, consciously without enlargement of thought. There are heights and valleys which, to those who seek them in a sympathetic spirit, are better " seats of learning " than any school or university in the land ; there are days when the climber seems to rise into a rarer mental as well as visual atmosphere, and to leave far below him the crass cares and prejudices of commonplace life.”

WalkingThoughtMountains
Book:On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills Pilgrimages to Snowdon and Scafell
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