John Muir

In The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts, John Muir is cited for one line that crystallizes the book’s case for second-order and systems thinking: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Shane Parrish uses the quote to argue against isolating any single variable — it sits alongside Garrett Hardin’s “You can never merely do one thing” (the First Law of Ecology) as evidence that interventions ripple through interconnected systems.

Context: John Muir (1838–1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, writer, and early wilderness preservationist whose advocacy helped establish the U.S. national park system and led to the founding of the Sierra Club. The “hitched to everything else” line comes from his 1911 book My First Summer in the Sierra.

Where this appears

• The Great Mental Models Volume 1 — General Thinking Concepts — quoted (“hitched to everything else in the Universe”) to illustrate interconnectedness and second-order thinking