2025-10-16
43 分钟The Economist.
Perhaps one of the biggest questions in economics is a simple one, but one that's proved surprisingly hard to answer.
Why did economic growth take off?
Before the 1700s, global economies were mostly stagnant.
People in most parts of the world lived materially similar lives to those who lived many hundreds of years before them.
It wasn't always for a lack of innovation.
There were important advances in agriculture, shipping and science.
The printing press was invented, but economic growth was rarely sustained.
Then, all that changed.
The industrial revolution was the biggest story to happen to mankind since we invented farming.
And that dirty smear of smoke spread across North America, much of Europe, China, Japan.
Between 1700 and 1870, the UK economy doubled in size.
Economies have continued to grow since then at an even more rapid pace.
So what was it about the industrial revolution that made it different from other advancements?
One man's insights transformed our understanding of how science was turned into something far bigger.
So we have the 18th century, we have two things happening, the enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution.
So it seemed to me that it would be a coincidence if these two events, this momentous, were unrelated.
Joel Mokyr argued that innovation wasn't enough to help economies grow year over year.
You need scientific understanding, the sharing of ideas, and skilled craftsmanship to make it work.
The printing press was clever, but you need to understand metallurgy, chemistry, and mechanics for it to help deliver growth.