The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

Today, fewer than 10 percent of journal articles in science and technology are authored by just one person. An analysis of book chapters and journal articles written across the social sciences likewise found “a sharp decline in single-author publishing.” In economics, solo-authored articles once predominated; now they account for only about 25 percent of publications in the discipline. In the legal field, a 2014 survey of law reviews concluded that nowadays, “team authors dominate solo authors in the production of legal knowledge.” Even the familiar archetype of the solo inventor (think Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell) is no longer representative. A 2011 report found that over the previous forty years, the number of individuals listed on each US patent application had steadily increased; nearly 70 percent of applications now named multiple inventors.