The Pattern Seekers cover art

The Pattern Seekers

How Autism Drives Human Invention

 Preview

Audible Standard 1-month free trial

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo + applicable tax after 30-day trial. Cancel Anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options

The Pattern Seekers

Written by: Simon Baron-Cohen
Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
Try for $0.00

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $17.91

Buy Now for $17.91

A groundbreaking argument about the link between autism and ingenuity.

Why can humans alone invent? In The Pattern Seekers, Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen makes a case that autism is as crucial to our creative and cultural history as the mastery of fire. Indeed, Baron-Cohen argues that autistic people have played a key role in human progress for 70,000 years, from the first tools to the digital revolution.

How? Because the same genes that cause autism enable the pattern seeking that is essential to our species' inventiveness. However, these abilities exact a great cost on autistic people, including social and often medical challenges, so Baron-Cohen calls on us to support and celebrate autistic people in both their disabilities and their triumphs. Ultimately, The Pattern Seekers isn't just a new theory of human civilization, but a call to consider anew how society treats those who think differently.

©2020 Simon Baron-Cohen (P)2021 Tantor Archaeology Biological Sciences Mental Health Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Science Autism Technology Mathematics
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most Relevant
Absolutely required reading / listening for anyone who lives or works with neuro-atypical individuals - I’ve learned more from this book than any other source I’ve come across!

Required Reading/Listening

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A decent read; one of those books with a small handful of insights and far too many fillers and case studies. My biggest gripe with this book is the author’s outdated and far-too-gendered view of autism. The notion that “people on the spectrum like systems, not people” may hold true… to the extent that systems and people are mutually exclusive categories. As a woman with ASD, I contend that they are not.

Outdated and stereotyped view of autism

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I got this book on a recommendation because I particularly enjoy the narrator, especially when my own neurodivergent brain needs to quiet down. However, the authors take on human innovation lost me and I checked out in chapter 5 when he claimed Homo sapiens were the only hominid innovators.

Cohen seems to pick and choose his historical facts to suit his hypothesis, rather than adjusting his hypothesis to historical facts. The point where he fully lost me was in discussing Neanderthals, claiming stone tools don’t count as innovation. He seemed to have conveniently excluded the fact that they also fashioned clothing for themselves, softening animal hides through a variety of means and fashioning bone needles to stitch them together.

This level of deliberate fact exclusion will turn off most of the “pattern seekers” he seems to be attempting to describe.

Furthermore, his repeated statement that an autism diagnosis is only useful if the autistic person needs functional support is … horrible? Wrong? Ableist? All of the above? It was that exact idea that prevented so many “functional” autistics from getting a diagnosis until adulthood, leading to wretched childhoods.


If I could give negative stars, I would.

Deeply disappointing.
Do not recommend.

The hypothesis is interesting. The writing, fact exclusion, and ableism is HORRIBLE!!!

DNF- Do not recommend!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
lost audio mid way through 1st chapter, I still want the book but its not there.

if it worked it might be good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.