Throughout his long and distinguished career, Mokyr has been fascinated by the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution launched an unprecedented fast-forward movement in the welfare of mankind, a shift from “Smithian” to “Schumpeterian” growth. In influential and widely read previous books, Mokyr identified technology as the key element in that shift; now he is seeking to uncover the cultural roots of the new technology. Why, he asks in this book, did Europe manage to upgrade its technological culture from producing haphazard results in, say, 1500, to one of permanent improvement from around 1700?
Given that he is an economist, you might expect Mokyr to look for “incentives,” but instead he concentrates on “attitudes,” more specifically, ideas about harnessing nature to serve human needs. In five short chapters, Mokyr lays out the theoretical foundations for his inquiry. Borrowing from a range of social sciences as well as biology, he chooses an...