Gifts of Athena

Book: The Gifts of Athena. Joel Mokyr.

"traces the rise of the industrial revolution and the important role of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution in increasing access to knowledge in society at large" [1]

Description

"“The central phenomenon of the modern age is that as an aggregate we know more. New knowledge developed in the past three centuries has created a great deal of social conflict and suffering, just as it was the origin of undreamt-of-wealth and security. It revolutionized the structures of firms and households, it altered the way people look and feel, how long they live, how many children they have, and how they spend their time. Every aspect of our material existence has been altered by our new knowledge.”

Review

Anthony Williams:

"Mokyr argues that the phenomenal rate of knowledge accumulation and economic growth since the scientific revolution can be traced to the evolution of social networks comprised of individuals affiliated with universities, publishers, corporations, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. These social networks underpin an immensely complicated communications structure that pulls the dispersed knowledge of humanity together in a largely self-organizing fashion — delivering sustained improvements in technology and prosperity, despite the absence of any conscious, hierarchical direction.

It is worth underlining what a remarkable achievement this is, particularly when placed in historical context. Only a handful of generations ago, most individuals had to be jacks-of-all-trades in order to cope with the large variety of problems essential to survival, not least of which including eating and providing shelter. Prior to the industrial revolution, specialization came at the expense of the variety necessary for survival for all but the most wealthy individuals.

As markets grew, people specialized at the expense of more “general” knowledge. But the loss of general knowledge was made up by an increase in trade.

Today, no one person in society needs to know everything in order to survive. On the contrary, we are collectively better off if everyone specializes in knowing only a few things very well. For so long as we have low cost mechanisms for integrating specialized knowledge with other complementary knowledge, we will collectively know a great deal more with a highly granular division of labor than we could in a world of generalists." (http://anthonydwilliams.com/2008/01/12/the-global-brain/)