An interview with Joel Mokyr, author of A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy
https://press.princeton.edu/interviews/qa-10835
How would you sum up the book’s main points?
Before 1800 the overwhelming majority of humankind was poor; today
in the industrialized world, almost nobody lives at the verge of
subsistence, and a majority of people in the world enjoy living
standards that would have been unimaginable a few centuries ago. My
book asks how and why that happened. The question of the Great
Enlightenment is central to economic history; a Nobel prize winning
economist, Robert Lucas, once wrote that once we start thinking
about it, it is hard to think of anything else.
Do we know how and where this started?
Yes, it started in Western Europe (primarily in Britain) in the
last third of the eighteenth century through a set of technological
innovations we now call the Industrial Revolution. From there it
spread to the four corners of the world, although the success rate
varied from place to place, and often the new techniques had to be
adapted to local circumstances.
How is this book different from other work looking at this
event?
The literature looking at the question of why this happened has
advanced three types of explanations: geographical (looking at
resources and natural endowments), political-institutional
(focusing on the State and economic policies), or purely economic,
through prices and incomes. My book examines culture: what did
people believe, value, and how did they learn to understand natural
phenomena and regularities they could harness to their material
improvement.
Whose culture mattered most here?
Good question! Technological progress and the growth of modern
science were driven first and foremost by a small educated elite of
literate people who had been trained in medicine, mathematics and
what they called “natural philosophy.” The culture of the large
majority of people, who were as yet uneducated and mostly
illiterate, mattered less in the early stages, but became
increasingly important at a later stage when mass education became
the norm.
So what was it about these intellectuals that mattered
most?
In my earlier work, especially my The Enlightened Economy (2009), I
pointed to what I called “the Industrial Enlightenment” as the
central change that prepared the ground for modern economic growth.
In the new book, I explain the origins of the Industrial
Enlightenment. At some point, say around 1700, the consensus of
intellectuals in Europe had become that material progress (what we
were later to call “economic growth”) was not only desirable but
possible, and that increasing what they called “useful knowledge”
(science and technology) was the way to bring it about. These
intellectuals then carried out that program through continuous
advances in science that eventually found a myriad of economic
applications.
How and why did this change happen?
That is the main question this book is focusing on and tries to
answer. It describes and analyzes the cultural changes in the
decades between Columbus and Newton, during what is sometimes known
as “early modern Europe.” It was an age of tremendous cultural
changes, above all of course the Reformation and the Scientific
Revolution. Equally important was the emergence of what is known as
“the Baconian Program,” in which Francis Bacon and his followers
formulated the principles of what later became the Industrial
Enlightenment. The success of these thinkers to persuade others of
the validity of their notions of progress and the importance of a
research agenda that reflected real economic needs is at the heart
of the story of how the Industrial Enlightenment emerged.
So why did this take place in this period and in Europe, and
not somewhere else?
Europe in this age enjoyed an unusual structure that allowed new
and fresh ideas to flourish as never before. On the one hand, it
was politically and religiously fragmented into units that fiercely
competed with one another. This created a competitive market both
for and among intellectuals that stimulated intellectual
innovation. It was a market for ideas that worked well and in it
the Baconian Program was an idea that succeeded, in part because it
was attractive to many actors, but also because it was marketed
effectively by cultural entrepreneurs. At the same time, political
fragmentation coexisted with a unified and transnational
institution (known at the time as the Republic of Letters) that
connected European intellectuals through networks of correspondence
and publications and created a pan-European competitive market in
which new ideas circulated all over the Continent. In this sense,
early modern Europe had the “best of all possible worlds” in having
all the advantages of diversity and fragmentation and yet have a
unified intellectual community.
Of all the new ideas, which ones were the most
important?
Many new ideas played a role in the intellectual transformations
that eventually led to the waves of technological progress we
associate with modern growth. One of the most important was the
decline in the blind veneration of ancient learning that was the
hallmark of many other cultures. Shaking off the paralyzing grip of
past learning is one of the central developments that counted in
the cultural evolution in this period. The “classical canon” of
Ptolemy and Aristotle was overthrown by rebels such as Copernicus
and Galileo, and over time the intellectuals of this age became
more assertive in their belief that they could outdo classical
learning and that many of the conventional beliefs that had ruled
the world of intellectuals in astronomy, medicine, and other fields
were demonstrably wrong. Evidence and logic replaced ancient
authority.
Was the success of the new ideas a foregone
conclusion?
Not at all: there was fierce resistance to intellectual innovation
by a variety of conservative powers, both religious and political.
Many of the most original and creative people were persecuted. But
in the end resistance failed, in large part because both people and
books — and hence ideas — could move around in Europe and move to
more liberal areas where their reception was more welcomed.
Could an Industrial Enlightenment not have happened
elsewhere, for example in China?
The book deals at length with the intellectual development of
China. In many ways, China’s economy in 1500 was as advanced and
sophisticated as Europe. But in China the kind of competitive
pluralism and diversity that were the hallmark of Europe were
absent, and even though we see attempts to introduce more
progressive thinking in China, it never succeeded to overthrow the
conservative vested interests that controlled the world of
intellectuals, above all the Mandarine bureaucracy. Instead of
explosive growth as in Europe, Chinese science and technology
stagnated.
Does the book have any implications for our own
time?
By focusing on the social and economic mechanisms that stimulated
and encouraged technological innovation in the past, my book points
to the kind of factors that will ensure future technological
creativity. First and foremost, innovation requires the correct
incentives. Intellectuals on the whole do not require vast riches,
but they will struggle for some measure of economic security and
the opportunity to do their research in an environment of
intellectual freedom in which successful innovation is respected
and rewarded. Second, the freedom to innovate thrives in
environments that are internationally competitive: just as much of
innovation in earlier times emerged from the rivalry between
England, France, Spain and the United Provinces, in the modern era
the global competition between the United States, the EU, China,
and so on will ensure continuous innovation. International
competition and mobility ensure the intellectual freedom needed to
propose new ideas. Finally, global institutions that share and
distribute knowledge, as well as coordinate and govern intellectual
communities of scientists and innovators across national boundaries
and cultural divides, are critical for continued technological
progress.