A Culture of Growth
The Origins of the Modern Economy
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Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Industrial Revolution sprang from cultural habits of inquisitiveness and hardheadedness in early modern Europe, according to this illuminating study from economic historian Mokyr (The Gifts of Athena). He discerns strands in Western European culture from 1500 to 1700 that predisposed it to intellectual advances that underpinned the Enlightenment and economic revolutions: the celebration of practical labor as a sacred calling, the impact of voyages of discovery on discrediting ancient worldviews, the Reformation's weakening of the Catholic Church as a cultural hegemon, and political fragmentation that helped dissidents evade state persecution. The result, he argues, was an elite culture oriented toward economic progress through increased knowledge and new thinking. These factors have been spotlighted by other historians, but Mokyr's discussion of them is wide-ranging and erudite, if sometimes dry and meandering. The book's most trenchant contribution is the author's investigation of the "competitive market for ideas" that sustained scientific "cultural entrepreneurs." Such figures as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton won fame and patronage within a republic of letters by making scientific and technological breakthroughs. Mokyr offers a useful corrective to excessively deterministic and materialistic treatments of economic history, emphasizing ideas the West, he argues, had a uniquely positive view about subjugating nature to human control and individual agency in shaping broad socioeconomic shifts.
