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The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy

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Joel Mokyr (Author)
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3.9 out of 5 stars 8 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0691120133
ISBN-10: 0691120137
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 7, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0691120137
  • ISBN-13: 978-0691120133
  • Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,054,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 starsToward an economics of knowledge
By Royce E. Buehler on January 11, 2003
Format: Hardcover
Partly because it is too wide-ranging to settle on any sound-bite answer, this is one of the better books around to examine the question of the sources of the West's technological and economic supremacy.
In "The Gifts of Athena", Joel Mokyr sets his sights on three objectives: First, to establish that expanding knowledge has been the engine driving the world's expanding economy over the last few centuries, rather than the other way around. Second, to explore the factors that control the discovery and application of new knowledge, so as to get a better grasp on why the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe, and why England might have led the way. Finally, to speculate on what I found to be a startling question: what's to prevent the explosive expansion of technology to which we have become accustomed from falling into stagnation, as lesser periods of innovation have done throughout history?
He accomplishes the first objective handily. Apparently some economists believe that the Industrial Revolution must have been driven primarily by economic forces (new means of capitalization and rising demand) rather than by the availability of science, because of the multi-century lag from Kepler and Newton to the economic blastoff. But Mokyr argues that there was a necessary intermediate stage, the "Industrial Enlightenment", which structurally altered the relationship between "what-is" and "how-to" forms of knowledge, as well as making both forms radically more accessible to artisans, entrepeneurs, and the general public.
His explorations of the other two questions are fresh and illuminating, but a bit picaresque. There's no overarching theory here and, except for parts of the chapter on adoption of new technology by households, little quantitative rigor.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsKnowledge as a Driver of Economic Growth
By Michael K. Bergman on August 12, 2006
Format: Paperback
This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in knowledge and its role in economic growth. "The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy," is a sweeping and comprehensive account of the period from 1760 (in what Mokyr calls the "Industrial Enlightenment") through the Industrial Revolution beginning roughly in 1820 and then continuing through the end of the 19th century. The book (and related expansions by Mokyr available as separate PDFs on the Internet) should be considered as the definitive reference on this topic to date. The book contains 40 pages of references to all of the leading papers and writers on diverse technologies from mining to manufacturing to health and the household. The scope of subject coverage, granted mostly focused on western Europe and America, is truly impressive.

Mokyr deals with `useful knowledge,' as he acknowledges Simon Kuznets` phrase. Mokyr argues that the growth of recent centuries was driven by the accumulation of knowledge and the declining costs of access to it. Mokyr helps to break past logjams that have attempted to link single factors such as the growth in science or the growth in certain technologies (such as the steam engine or electricity) as the key drivers of the massive increases in economic growth that coincided with the era now known as the Industrial Revolution.

Mokyr cracks some of these prior impasses by picking up on ideas first articulated through Michael Polanyi's "tacit knowing" (among other recent philosophers interested in the nature and definition of knowledge).Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsThought Provoking But Could be Written Better
By R. Albin TOP 1000 REVIEWER on November 14, 2004
Format: Hardcover
This is an interesting book devoted to the importance of knowledge in the formation of modern industrial economies. Mokyr has several goals. The first and most important is to illuminate the origins of the modern industrial economy. Others are to illustrate the impact of modern economy, particularly its knowledge based elements, on modern life, to discuss barriers to the acquisition and dissemination of knew and useful knowledge, and to discuss differences in economic behavior between firms and households. The quality of the book is somewhat uneven, possibly because this book is based on prior essays and lectures that Mokyr has prepared in the last decade. While the book certainly has a strong theme, the individual chapters don't allows cohere.

The initial part of the book is devoted to the thesis that a key, perhaps the key, feature leading to the genesis of the Industrial Revolution, was the birth in Western Europe of interest in "useful knowledge." This is not science per se, or engineering per se, but an amalgam of both driven by a desire to use knowledge of the natural world in ways that manipulate the natural world to human advantage. For Mokyr, the scientific revolution of the 17th century is a necessary precursor to the Industrial Revolution but the foundation of the Industrial Revolution is the Enlightenment's dedication to science, rationalism, its insistence that human activity can improve the lot of humanity, and its insistence on public dissemination of useful knowledge through publishing and education. The quintessential example of this crucial aspect of the Enlightenment is the Great Encyclopedia, dedicated to disseminating the best practices in virtually all areas of human activity.Read more ›
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