Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix Preface xiii Part I: Evolution, Culture, and Economic History Chapter 1: Culture and Economics 3 Chapter 2: Nature and Technology 16 Chapter 3: Cultural Evolution and Economics 22 Chapter 4: Choice-based Cultural Evolution 34 Chapter 5: Biases in Cultural Evolution 43 Part II: Cultural Entrepreneurs and Economic Change, 1500-1700 Chapter 6: Cultural Entrepreneurs and Choice-based Cultural Evolution 59 Chapter 7: Francis Bacon, Cultural Entrepreneur 70 Chapter 8: Isaac Newton, Cultural Entrepreneur 99 Part III: Innovation, Competition, and Pluralism in Europe, 1500-1700 Chapter 9: Cultural Choice in Action: Human Capital and Religion 119 Chapter 10: Cultural Change and the Growth of Useful Knowledge, 1500-1700 142 Chapter 11: Fragmentation, Competition, and Cultural Change 165 Chapter 12: Competition and the Republic of Letters 179 Part IV: Prelude to the Enlightenment Chapter 13: Puritanism and British Exceptionalism 227 Chapter 14: A Culture of Progress 247 Chapter 15: The Enlightenment and Economic Change 267 Part V: Cultural Change in the East and West Chapter 16: China and Europe 287 Chapter 17: China and the Enlightenment 321 Epilogue: Useful Knowledge and Economic Growth 339 References 343 Index 381

About the Author

Joel Mokyr, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University and Senior Professor at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. His books include (with Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini) Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000 (Princeton).

Reviews

"Co-Winner of the 2018 Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association"

"Finalist for the 2017 Hayek Prize, The Manhattan Institute"

"Honorable Mention for the 2017 PROSE Award in European and World History, Association of American Publishers"

"One of MIT Technology Review’s Best Books of 2016"

"Fascinating. . . . [Mokyr] reminds us that the skirmishing of philosophers and their ideas, the preoccupation of popular historians, is in many ways a sideshow—that the revolution that gave Europe dominance was, above all, scientific, and that the scientific revolution was, above all, an artisanal revolution."---Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

"A fine book. . . . One of our country's great economic historians has helped us better understand the greatest transformation in human welfare our planet has ever seen."---Richard Vedder, Wall Street Journal

"A brilliant book. . . . You will finish it impressively learned about how we got to where we are in the modern world."---Deirdre McCloskey, Prospect

"The sheer elegance of Mr. Mokyr's theory . . . has much to commend it. And it is refreshing that an economist is taking seriously the idea that ideas and culture make a difference to economic growth."
*The Economist*

"What stands out from Mokyr’s approach is the highly contingent character of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. They happened because a lot ofdifferent things happened to fall into place; small deviations in the course of events could have given us an entirely different world of technological and economic power."---Diane Coyle, Financial Times

"In pointing to growth-boosting factors that go beyond either the state or the market, Mokyr's book is very welcome."---Victoria Bateman, Times Higher Education

"Wide-ranging and erudite. . . . 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."
*Publishers Weekly*

"If we want to understand modern development, we must then ask why we now live in a world that is capable of cumulative innovation that gradually raises our material standards of living. Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy provides an original and persuasive answer to this question. . . . [A] fascinating historical analysis. . . . Invaluable."---Enrico Spolaore, Journal of Economic Literature

"[Mokyr] dives into the mystery of how the world went from being poor to being so rich in just a few centuries. . . . Drawing on centuries of philosophy and scientific advancements, Mokyr argues that there's a reason the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe and not, for example, in China, which had in previous centuries shown signs of more scientific advancement: Europe developed a unique culture of competitive scientific and intellectual advancement that was unprecedented and not at all predestined."---Ana Swanson, WashingtonPost.com's Wonkblog

"Mokyr has written a book to read slowly and chew over thoroughly. . . . He is a wonderfully well-read, lucid and continuously interesting guide to a vast literature and invariably thought provoking."---Alan Ryan, Literary Review

"Someone needed to write a book like this, and there could have been no better author to do so than Mokyr."---Peer Vries, Foreign Affairs

"One has to admire the depth of knowledge and the subtlety of Mokyr’s argument. . . . For serious students of the Enlightenment itself, Mokyr’s magnum opus will be required reading for a long time to come."---Nicholas Crafts, History Today

"Ultimately, without the impetus of science, economic growth would have fizzled out after 1815. A Culture of Growth is certainly making me rethink."---Brad DeLong, Nature

"Economic historian Joel Mokyr has written a capstone work on the dynamics of the industrial revolution."---Arnold Kling, Econlib

"It is not often that a book leaves me gasping in admiration for the breadth and depth of an author's reading and knowledge, but this one did."---Ted Nield, Geoscientist Online

"This book is the latest example of Mokyr's ability to explicate complex issues, illustrating his big-picture thesis with a myriad of fascinating details. He writes with clarity--enjoyable for the general reader as well as for the specialist in economic history. A Culture of Growth is a must-read for anyone interested in how Western society got where it is today and what this implies for the spread of technology in the global economy of the future."
*Finance & Development*

"A Culture of Growth is an insightful quest into the economic history of the last five centuries. Mokyr’s historical laboratory is early modern Europe, when a small mass of highly skilled artisans, entrepreneurs, financiers and merchants laid the roots of what was to become the Industrial Revolution."
*Progressive Post*

"A Culture of Growth is a book of immense importance for us Indians especially when we are getting comfortable, forever playing victim to the depredations of British imperialism instead of wholeheartedly focusing on beating the West at its game as the Chinese are doing. . . . Well worth tackling."---Uday Balakrishnan, Hindu Business Line

"A fresh historical treatment."---Darcy Allen, IPA Review

"This is a tour d'horizon of an exciting new area of inquiry, which offers important insights into the future of our civilization and the evolution of an increasingly technical world. Mokyr's book is so rich and stimulating that no brief review can do it justice. So, dear reader, read the book!"---Wolfgang Kasper, Policy

"The book represents recognition that culture has finally arrived as an important and legitimate concept in discussions of economic growth. In this endeavor, the book is an important landmark. . . . Students and scholars working in the field will benefit from the intelligent and rich discussion provided in A Culture of Growth."---Mark Koyama, Independent Review

"After reading this book, chances are that you won’t look at the economic, social, and political world in quite the same way as before."---Pierre Lemieux, Regulation

"An important body of work. It contains ideas, propositions, historical facts, biographies of influential scholars, writers and scientists, and it is a confirmation of the author's expertise of a broad range of topics in the economics of culture and comparative economic history of an emerging Europe and China."---Dr Meltem Ince-Yenilmez, Rest Journal