Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

by David Epstein

“The disparity between the total quantity of recorded knowledge . . . and the limited human capacity to assimilate it, is not only enormous now but grows unremittingly,”

He realized he could make discoveries by connecting information from scientific articles in subspecialty domains that never cited one another and that had no scientists who worked together.

Arrowsmith, that helped other users do what he did—devise searches that might turn up distant but relevant sets of scientific articles, and ignited a field of information science that grapples with connecting diverse areas of knowledge, as specialties that can inform one another drift apart.