Joel Mokyr explains clearly to his audience that political fragmentation coupled with an intellectual and cultural unity that existed in Europe, created an integrated market of ideas that was decisive in generating first the Enlightenment, and subsequently the Industrial Revolution. This unity resulted from the legacies of both the former Roman Empire and the Christian Church.
This market of ideas was at its strongest in Great Britain. The belief in progress stood out in this country for several reasons:
* This belief was more pragmatic than on the European Continent.
* Not only the intellectual elite, but also the educated entrepreneurs, literate mechanics, trained engineers, and high-skill artisans, subscribed to this value system.
* The British society was working on the same side as the existing regime. They all strove for progress, resulting in the accumulation of incremental, practical advances in science, technology, and institutional reforms.
The Industrial Revolution that was born in Great Britain spread quickly to the Continent, with varying degrees of success.
This community of ideas that combined pluralism and competition with a coordination mechanism that allowed knowledge to be distributed and shared, and therefore challenged, corrected, and supplemented, did not exist elsewhere.
Mr. Mokyr shows with much conviction why China never managed to break out of the Cardwell’s Law until the second half of the twenty century. That country came close to breaking that law with success during the Song dynasty.
In summary, the author does an outstanding job in demonstrating that what happened in eighteenth-century Europe, was both exceptional and unique.
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