The Hedgehog and the Fox is an essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin that was published as a book in 1953. It was one of his most popular essays with the public. However, Berlin said, ‘I meant it as a kind of enjoyable intellectual game, but it was taken seriously. Every classification throws light on something.’ It has been compared to ‘an intellectual’s cocktail-party game.’
The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus: ‘a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.’ The fable of ‘The Fox and the Cat’ embodies the a related idea: having one simple, reliable skill is better than boasting many clever but useless plans.
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The Daily Omnivore 