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The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Past economic growth is crucial to the material aspects of our existence: the best predictor of the living standard that a newborn baby can expect..." (more)
Key Phrases: technological creativity, new husbandry, classical technology, United States, Lynn White, Adam Smith (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An excellent volume outlining in great detail, yet wide ranging in scope, the role of technological change in history. Will make a great supplemental text for our future World Economic History course that I'll be teaching."--Michael Haupert, Univ. of Wisconsin-LaCrosse

"Mokyr has demonstrated, yet again, that he is one the best economic historians around. His book is a treasure trove of facts and insights about technological progress often overlooked in other accounts. Further, his argument that economics might do well to adopt the methodology of evolutionary biology instead of the standard application of Newtonian physics is cogent and convincing."--Howard Bodenhorn, St. Lawrence Univ.

"An informative and well-written study of humankind's progress."--J.M. Skaggs,Wichita State Univ.

"The history and the examples Mokyr uses are a delight to read."--Business Week

"Joel Mokyr is a first-rate scholar who has read a wide body of literature. The book is very well written, lively and engaging. It is closely reasoned and well executed"--Nathan Rosenberg, Stanford University

"Joel Mokyr likes telling his story and he tells it well; his book makes for good reading and rereading, and this in itself sets him apart from many of his fellow economic historians."--The New York Times Book Review

"[Mokyr's] examples are so comprehensive, his knowledge so detailed, and his conclusions so broad and firmly drawn that the reader comes away full of insight."--The Christian Science Monitor

"[A] rich, subtly flavored buffet of theories, ideas, insights and examples."--Wall Street Journal

"Lucid and accessible."--Reason

"Raise[s] some very insightful questions."--Informationweek


Product Description

In a world of supercomputers, genetic engineering, and fiber optics, technological creativity is ever more the key to economic success. But why are some nations more creative than others, and why do some highly innovative societies--such as ancient China, or Britain in the industrial revolution--pass into stagnation?

Beginning with a fascinating, concise history of technological progress, Mokyr sets the background for his analysis by tracing the major inventions and innovations that have transformed society since ancient Greece and Rome. What emerges from this survey is often surprising: the classical world, for instance, was largely barren of new technology, the relatively backward society of medieval Europe bristled with inventions, and the period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution was one of slow and unspectacular progress in technology, despite the tumultuous developments associated with the Voyages of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution.

What were the causes of technological creativity? Mokyr distinguishes between the relationship of inventors and their physical environment--which determined their willingness to challenge nature--and the social environment, which determined the openness to new ideas. He discusses a long list of such factors, showing how they interact to help or hinder a nation's creativity, and then illustrates them by a number of detailed comparative studies, examining the differences between Europe and China, between classical antiquity and medieval Europe, and between Britain and the rest of Europe during the industrial revolution. He examines such aspects as the role of the state (the Chinese gave up a millenium-wide lead in shipping to the Europeans, for example, when an Emperor banned large ocean-going vessels), the impact of science, as well as religion, politics, and even nutrition. He questions the importance of such commonly-cited factors as the spill-over benefits of war, the abundance of natural resources, life expectancy, and labor costs.

Today, an ever greater number of industrial economies are competing in the global market, locked in a struggle that revolves around technological ingenuity. The Lever of Riches, with its keen analysis derived from a sweeping survey of creativity throughout history, offers telling insights into the question of how Western economies can maintain, and developing nations can unlock, their creative potential.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 9, 1992)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195074777
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195074772
  • Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #63,006 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Joel Mokyr
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
Past economic growth is crucial to the material aspects of our existence: the best predictor of the living standard that a newborn baby can expect to enjoy is the accident of where he or she is born Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
technological creativity, new husbandry, classical technology, coke smelting, heavy plow, nological progress
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Lynn White, Adam Smith, Cardwell's Law, Richard Roberts, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci, Beau de Rochas, James Watt, John Kay, John Smeaton, Matthew Boulton, Maynard Smith, Renaissance Europe, Western Christianity, Cambridge University Press, Eli Whitney, Henry Bessemer, Jacques Besson, New World, The Years of Miracles, Asia Minor, Bodleian Library, Cyril Stanley Smith, Henry Maudslay
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Customer Reviews

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3.4 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Invaluable Frame of Reference, January 12, 2000
By Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
According to Joel Mokyr, economic growth is the result of four distinct processes: Investment (increases in the capital stock), Commercial Expansion, Scale or Size Effects, and Increase in the Stock of Human Knowledge (which includes technological progress proper as well as changes in institutions). Throughout his brilliant book, he correlates technological creativity with economic progress throughout classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and then into the later 19th century.

In Chapter 12 ("Epilogue"), he further develops what is assuredly an invaluable frame-of-reference within which to understand our own time. Why does technological creativity occur? There are two components in the invention-innovation sequence: "technical problems involve a struggle between mind and matter, that is, they involve control of the physical environment." The other component is social: "For a new technique to be implemented, the innovator has to react with a human environment comprised of competitors, customers, suppliers, the authorities, neighbors, possibly the priest."

This brief commentary has only inadequately suggested the scope and depth of Mokyr's rigorous inquiry into technological creativity and its contributions to economic progress. In weeks and months to come, there will be new "levers" which help to create new "riches." The historical context within which Joel Mokyr places these opportunities is a contribution of incalculable value.

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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Of shoulder collars, waterwheels and the Chinese mystery, November 5, 2000
By David Walker (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The fall of the Berlin Wall did more than free Eastern Europe; it also freed historians from the somewhat chilling influence of Marxism and post-modernism. By the late 1990s, a new flowering of grand economic history had brought us David Landes's "the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" and Jared Diamond's sublime "Guns, Germs and Steel". But before them came 1990's "The Lever Of Riches", with Joel Mokyr setting out in wonderful detail the notorious economic mystery story called technological progress.

Mokyr starts with the technologies of Greek and Roman antiquity, then moves on to the neglected breakthroughs of Western Europe's Dark Ages (the horseshoe, the horse collar, the waterwheel) and the Islamic Golden Age. But his history naturally centres on the Western European technological flowering that began around 1400.

He caps this narrative with an ambitious discussion of an issue he regards as central to the mystery of technological development: the relative decline of China, the pre-eminent technological power of the centuries up to 1400.

Mokyr, writing before the upsurge of interest in complex adaptive systems, ends the book comparing technological progress with biological evolution. The attempt is only partially successful, but you feel he's opening a new chapter of debate. "A society that has ceased to concern itself with the progress of the past will soon lose belief in its capacity to progress in the future," he concludes. And he's right.

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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Overview and Critical Analysis, April 8, 2001
By R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This very interesting but relatively brief book is devoted to the role of technological innovation in economic history. In a series of well written and very well referenced chapters, Mokyr discusses the role of technological innovation as a motor of economic growth and social transformation. Topics covered include a general discussion of technological innovation and growth, narrative chapters on technological innovation in the Classical world, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe, and the Modern world up to about 1850, discussions of why China and Classical civilization failed to develop an industrial civilization, and a discussion of the analogy between technological innovation and organic evolution. This is a work of synthesis; Mokyr presents little novel information and draws heavily on an impressive body of existing scholarship. Mokyr presents some interesting and important conclusions. Technological innovation is not driven primarily by ordinary market forces. The Industrial Revolution was the culmination in many centuries of technological innovation dating back to the Middle Ages. The failure of China to develop an Industrial Revolution remains a persistent puzzle. By about 1400, Chinese civilization was the world leader in many key technologies but then slides back and is eventually overtaken and then explosively surpassed by Europe. An important point made by Mokyr is that no nation or culture was a perpetual locus of technological innovation. In Europe, innovations were most common in Italy during the Renaissance, followed by major sites in the Low Countries and Germany, followed by the British explosion. Europe, with its divided polities, may have been more conducive to the development of industrial technology. European intellectual and scientific traditions may also have favored the emergence of industrial technology. Whatever factors responsible, Mokyr concludes that the emergence of industrial technology was probably an unusual and highly contingent event. This is similar to the conclusion reached by Kenneth Pomerantz in his recent book, The Great Divergence, an explicit comparison of economic development in China, Japan, and Europe. These conclusions and analyses completely undermine the common and facile notions of European capitalism leading automatically to the success of European culture.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Boring
This was another book required by my European Economic History class. While there is a ton of useful information in this book, it didn't feel like there were any original... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Joseph Fung

4.0 out of 5 stars More than a historical explination of innovation!
This book is an in-depth study in why technological Creativity happens. Mokyr is doing more than just discussing history; he is giving it intellectual context. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Jonathan L. Wilson

5.0 out of 5 stars The Economics of Progress

This is an important book about the historical process that not so long ago was unashamedly called "progress. Read more
Published on March 29, 2006 by Hiram Caton

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Information -- And Read the Reviews Too
This is a scholarly and fact-focused treatment of a subject that has often been treated in a way that is meant to support a particular author's theoretical framework. Read more
Published on December 27, 2004 by Daniel G. Currell

4.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the history of wealth
Understanding topics of human achievement often means understanding their history. Such is the case when we investigate the creation of unprecedented wealth during the last... Read more
Published on November 6, 2004 by Koen Robeys

4.0 out of 5 stars Good overview of technological progress
It is a good book and surprisingly maligned by a couple of the other reviewers.

h0td0gsh0p complains that Mokyr does not understand physics. Read more

Published on April 22, 2004 by J. Andreas

2.0 out of 5 stars Rather dry and dull.
I found this book made a fascinating subject really boring. I had a tough time finnishing it.

In all fairness, I learned quite a few interesting things. Read more

Published on May 28, 2003 by Gaetan Lion

1.0 out of 5 stars Ill-founded Deductions
To be useful a book on the creativity of societies and peoples which makes deductions based on what was invented, where and when, has to get the underlying facts approximately... Read more
Published on July 10, 2001

1.0 out of 5 stars Some interesting facts, but that's about all
I suppose that I'm reading this book for the wrong reason (a college course on the history of technology), yet I'm still turned off by the book's focus on "material... Read more
Published on February 5, 2001 by h0td0gsh0p

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