The European Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and Modern Economic Growth

Abstract

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Risk, Institutions and Growth: Why England and Not China?

“…Transitions' institutional conditionality is a contested issue in economic history and growth theory. Economic historians have traditionally emphasized England's growthenhancing institutions, such as limited government, better labor markets, and a social environment conducive to innovations (e.g., North and Weingast, 1989;Mokyr, 1990Mokyr, , 1999Mokyr, , 2007and Solar, 1995). More recent literature, however, has down-played institutions' role, claiming that intra-and inter-European institutional distinctions were insignificant on the eve of the Industrial Revolution (e.g., Craft 1977;Pomeranz, 2000;Clark, 2005).…”

In the woods: darkness at noon or Sunday in the park with Lin?

“…In his recent work, the economic historian Joel Mokyr advances a theory about the intellectual origins of modern economic growth (Mokyr 2005(Mokyr , 2007. In his view, a new ideology in Europe created incentives for developing science-based technology that later became the engine of the British Industrial Revolution and subsequent industrial revolutions.…”

Why Did the Industrial Revolution Start in Britain?

“…In the same vein, Mokyr (2005bMokyr ( , 2010aMokyr ( , 2011 shed light on the 18 th century Enlightenment which supposedly carried out many aspects of the Baconian program through institutional developments that increased both the amount of knowledge and its accessibility to those who could make the best use of it 59 . These institutional changes, which rooted into the works of "cultural entrepreneurs" -as Mokyr (2013b) called them -like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, made Britain and Northwestern Europe more friendly to innovative activity.…”

“…As Bacon (1620) Musson and Robinson (1969) that the British industrial revolution was not unrelated to the scientific revolution and required something more than the "uneducated empiricism" (p.87) suggested by traditional historiography 55 (O Grada, 2014a). Yet although some direct connection can be established between science and some of the industrial inventions, such as the chemical inventions and arguably the steam engine, scholars have found it hard to associate the main technological breakthroughs of the British industrial revolution with the scientific discoveries of its time (Mokyr, 2005b(Mokyr, , 2011. Thus, a number of historians and economic historians have criticized Musson and Robinson's focus on science, arguing that early British inventions were mostly empirical and owed very little to direct scientific guidance and knowledge (see e.g.…”

“…Goldstone (2006Goldstone ( , 2009 attributed the British prosperity to the diffusion of the engineering culture -directly derived from Galileo's works on mechanics (Cardwell, 1972) -into the technological world of the production 57 . Shedding light on the culture of the Enlightenment, Mokyr (2005bMokyr ( , 2010aMokyr ( , 2011 proposed to explain British industrialization as a byproduct of the scientific revolution, that took a particular intellectual turn in the 18 th century (Clark, 2012b). Mokyr (2005b:291) used the expression "Industrial Enlightenment", defined as "the belief in the possibility and desirability of economic progress and growth through knowledge", to describe the slice of the Enlightenment movement that supposedly bridged the scientific and industrial revolutions 58 .…”