Knowledge, enlightenment, and the industrial revolution: Reflections on the gifts of Athena

History of Science

Volumn 45, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 185-196

  Mokyr, Joel ^a  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249813400     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327530704500205     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Joel Mokyr, "The intellectual origins of modern economic growth", Journal of economic history, Ixv (2005), 285-351.
2. David Mitch, "The role of education and skill in the British Industrial Revolution", in Joel Mokyr (ed.), The British Industrial Revolution: An economic perspective, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO, 1999), 241-79.
3. John R. Harris, "Skills, coal and British industry in the eighteenth century", in Essays in industry and technology in the eighteenth century (Aldershot, 1992);
4. idem. Industrial espionage and technology transfer (Aldershot, 2001).
5. For an attempt to deal with this question, see Joel Mokyr, "Useful knowledge as an evolving system: The view from Economic History", in Larry Blume and Steven Durlauf (eds), The economy as an evolving complex system, iii (Oxford, 2006), 307-37.
6. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, L'invention technique au siècle des Lumières (Paris, 2000). Stewart captures the flavour of my argument in his statement that Enlightenment thinkers considered the distinctions between scholars and craftsmen downright "to the philosophical enterprise" though they were regarded as equally harmful to material progress in general. Count Rumford noted impatiently in 1799 that "there are no two classes of men in society that are more distinct, or that are more separated from each other by a more marked line, than philosophers and those who are engaged in arts and manufactures" and that this prevented "all connection and intercourse between them".
7. Thompson, William Count Rumford, The compete works of Count Rumford (London, 1876), 743-5.
8. Elsewhere, indeed, I pointed to the competence of British skilled craftsmen as a crucial element of the British Industrial Revolution. See Joel Mokyr, "Technological change, 1700-1830", in Roderick Floud and D. N. McCloskey (eds), The economic history of Britain since 1700, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1994), i, 12-43,
9. and Joel Mokyr, "Long-term economic growth and the history of technology", in Handbook of economic growth, ed. by Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf (Amsterdam, 2005), 1127-9.
10. See Margaret C. Jacob, "Mechanical science on the factory floor: The early Industrial Revolution in Leeds", in this issue of History of science.
11. Carlo Marco Belfanti, "Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge", Technology and culture, xlv (2004), 569-89.
12. These differences in competence were clearly understood by contemporaries. Thus Jean Baptiste Say in the early nineteenth century: "the enormous wealth of Britain is less owing to her own advances in scientific acquirements, high as she ranks in that department, as to the wonderful practical skills of her adventurers in the useful application of knowledge and the superiority of her workmen." See Jean-Baptiste Say, A treatise on political economy, 4th edn (Boston, 1803), 32-33.
13. Jacob, op. cit. (ref. 7).
14. H. Fions Cohen, "Inside Newcomen's fire engine: The Scientific Revolution and the rise of the modem world", History of technology, xxv (2004), 111-32, p. 123.
15. Michael Hunter, Establishing the new science: The experience of the early Royal Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, NH, 1989).
16. Peter Burke, A social history of knowledge (Cambridge, 2000), 44.
17. John T. Desaguliers, A course of experimental philosophy, 3rd edn (London, 1763), i, p. iii.
18. Charles C. Gillispie, Science and polity in France at the end of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1980), 438-44. It is indeed interesting that Berg cites John Harris's somewhat dismissive remark about the discovery of the properties of steel by Berthollet, Monge, and Vandermonde in 1786. Without the knowledge that carbon content determined the characteristics of steel, it would have been rather hard to make progress in this industry - though it took many years from that paper to Henry Bessemer and Robert Mushet. The knowledge, however, had clearly diffused to Britain by the 1820s, and was cited in widely available sources
19. (e.g. The repertory of arts, manufactures and agriculture (London, 1821), 369;
20. Edward James Wilson, The artist's and mechanic's encyclopaedia, ii (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1830), 67). In France, the Committee for Public Safety instructed the three scientists to write a 34-page pamphlet depicting how to make steel and distributed fifteen thousand copies.
21. See Jeff Horn, The path not taken: French industrialization in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 147-8.
22. Larry Stewart, "A meaning for machines: Modernity, utility, and the eighteenth-century British public", Journal of modem history, lxx (1998), 259-94, p. 264.
23. See Joel Mokyr, "The political economy of technological change: Resistance and innovation in economic history", in Maxine Berg and Kristin Bruland (eds), Technological revolutions in Europe (Cheltenham, 1998), 39-64.
24. Joel Mokyr, "The market for ideas and the origins of economic growth in eighteenth century Europe" [Heineken Lecture], in Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis, 2007, forthcoming.
25. An example is Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, widely believed to be the true inventor of the steam car, whose fardier avapeur of 1769 was a steam-propelled vehicle. The research was funded by the French military and was discontinued in 1772, but he was awarded an annual pension by Louis XV in recognition of his efforts.
26. The example cited by Stewart, the Society of Arts's promised prize for the best imitation of Chinaware from British raw materials, is another case in point.
27. Joel Mokyr, "Mercantilism, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution", presented to the Conference in Honor of Eli F. Heckscher, Stockholm, May 2003. Forthcoming in Ronald Findlay, Rolf Henriksson, Håkan Lindgren and Mats Lundahl (eds), Eli F. Heckscher (1879-1952): A celebratory symposium (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 269-303;
28. and idem,
29. "The great synergy: The European Enlightenment as a factor in modern economic growth", in Wilfred Dolfsma and Luc Soete (eds), Understanding the dynamics of a knowledge economy (Cheltenham, 2006), 7-41.
30. William Baumol, The free-market innovation machine: Analyzing the growth miracle of capitalism (Princeton, NJ, 2002).
31. Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny, The grabbing hand: Government pathologies and their cures (Cambridge, MA, 1998).
32. S. R. Epstein, "Craft guilds, apprenticeships, and technological change in pre-industrial Europe", Journal of economic history, Iviii (1998), 684-713;
33. idem, "Knowledge-sharing and technological transfer in premodern Europe, c. 1200 - c. 1800", unpublished manuscript, presented to the EHA Annual Conference, San Jose, 2004.
34. Sheilagh Ogilvie, "Guilds, efficiency, and social capital: Evidence from German proto-industry", Economic history review, lvii (2004), 286-333.
35. For a more detailed analysis, see Mokyr, op. cit. (ref. 18).
36. For a brief discussion of the Chinese KaoZheng movement in the late seventeenth century and how it failed to turn into anything that would affect economic performance, see Mokyr, "Synergy" (ref. 21).
37. Joel Mokyr, "Mobility, creativity, and technological development: David Hume, Immanuel Kant and the economic development of Europe", in 0. Abel (ed.), Kolloquiumsband of the XX. Deutschen Kongresses für Philosophie (Berlin, 2006), 1131-61.
38. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An interpretation. The rise of modern paganism (New York, 1966), 24.
39. A good example is the location of Voltaire's Ferney estate, just over the Swiss border. It had to be located in France to avoid Geneva's rule against having a private theatre, but close enough so that in extremis he could make a quick escape, which, given that this layout was common knowledge, was in fact never necessary.
40. An elaborate argument on the growth of useful knowledge thanks to the changing dynamics of these networks can be found in Randall Collins, The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change (Cambridge, MA, 1998), chap. 10.