Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that ...spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton. Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history at Northwestern University and Sackler Professor at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at the University of Tel Aviv. His many books include The Enlightened Economy and The Gifts of Athena (Princeton). He is the recipient of the Heineken Prize for History and the International Balzan Prize for Economic History.
The gifts of Athena Mokyr, Joel
2002, 2002., 20111114, 2011, 2003-01-01
eBook, Book
"The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world. Its result is now often called ...the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large - as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change." "Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science."--BOOK JACKET.
CLANS, GUILDS, AND MARKETS de la Croix, David; Doepke, Matthias; Mokyr, Joel
The Quarterly journal of economics,
02/2018, Letnik:
133, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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In the centuries leading up to the Industrial Revolution, Western Europe gradually pulled ahead of other world regions in terms of technological creativity, population growth, and income per capita. ...We argue that superior institutions for the creation and dissemination of productive knowledge help explain the European advantage. We build a model of technological progress in a preindustrial economy that emphasizes the person-to-person transmission of tacit knowledge. The young learn as apprentices from the old. Institutions such as the family, the clan, the guild, and the market organize who learns from whom. We argue that medieval European institutions such as guilds, and specific features such as journeymanship, can explain the rise of Europe relative to regions that relied on the transmission of knowledge within closed kinship systems (extended families or clans).
In recent years, economists have revived the specter of slow growth and secular stagnation. From the point of view of economic history, what should we make of such doomster prophecies? As economic ...historians all know, for 97% or so of recorded history, the stationary state well-describes the long-run dynamics of the world economy. Growth was slow, intermittent, and reversible. The Industrial Revolution rang in a period of sustained economic growth. Is that growth sustainable? One way to come to grips with that question is to analyze the brakes on economic growth before the Industrial Revolution and examine how they were released. Once these mechanisms are identified, we can look at the economic history of the past few decades and make an assessment of how likely growth is to continue. The answer I give is simple: there is no technological reason for growth in economic welfare to slow down, although institutions may become in some area a serious concern on the sustainability of growth.
Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs--and their innovations--have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations.The Invention of ...Enterprisegathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location.
The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society.
The Invention of Enterpriselays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.
The importance of the patent system in the British Industrial Revolution has to be scaled down. Inventors were not all motivated primarily by a desire to maximize income: the "two sharp spurs that ...quicken invention and animate application," as William Shipley, the founder of the society of Arts, put it in 1753, were "Profit and Honour." Much of the reward was indirect, through "honor," which was clearly a reflection of the importance of signaling and reputation in this world. Nor can one altogether rule out any role for altruism, as well as a direct utility from being able to solve hard problems--what could be term the "crossword puzzle" motive. None of this is to suggest that money was unimportant to most inventors. But the patent system, for the vast majority of them, offered a false hope, and the expected payoff of a patent was in all likelihood negative.
Abstract This paper discusses the historical and social origins of the bifurcation in the political institutions of China and Western Europe. An important factor, recognized in the literature, is ...that China centralized state institutions very early on, while Europe remained politically fragmented for much longer. These initial differences, however, were amplified by the different social organizations (clans in China, corporate structures in Europe) that spread in these two societies at the turn of the first millennium AD. State institutions interacted with these organizations, and were shaped and influenced by this interaction. The paper discusses the many ways in which corporate organizations contributed to the emergence of representative institutions and gave prominence to the Rule of Law in the early stages of state formation in Europe, and how specific features of lineage organizations contributed to the consolidation of the Imperial regime in China.
This publication follows on from the Economica Phillips 2022 lecture presented by Professor Guido Tabellini on 01 December 2022.
Various explanations of Britain s economic technological leadership between 1760 and 1850 have been proposed for many decades and have dealt with many aspects of British society: politics, natural ...resources, and its Empire. One of the less-discussed hypotheses places the emphasis on the quality of its workforce: the most skilled workers in Britain such as engineers, instrument-makers, and millwrights. These workers were the ones who actually put into practice the innovative blueprints and models of the inventors. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, Britain s high-skilled workers were superior to those anywhere else, and this difference was a critical element in its technological performance during the Industrial Revolution. The institution that produced this superior competence was British apprenticeship, which was the chief source of technical human capital in this age.
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