(2010-06-30) Mokyr Enlightenment And Industrial Revolution

Edward Glaeser focuses on the connection Joel Mokyr sees in his book The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850 ISBN:9780300124552 between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age. “What is new here,” he writes, “is not an argument that the Enlightenment changed history, for better and/or worse, but that its economic effects on the wealth-creating capabilities of the affected societies have been overlooked.” Mokyr has long emphasized the economic value of new ideas and he thus emphasizes that “Britain’s intellectual sphere had turned into a competitive market for ideas, in which logic and evidence were becoming more important and ‘authority’ as such was on the defensive.”

Reminds me of The Lunar Men.