Joel Mokyr

“By ignoring and evading rather than altogether abolishing obsolete rules and regulations, eighteenth century Britain moved slowly toward a free market society.”

“Technological systems, like all cultural systems, must have some built-in stability.”

“What made the West successful was neither capitalism, nor science, nor an historical accident such as a favourable geography. Instead, political and mental diversity combined to create an ever changing panorama of technologically creative societies.”

“If England led the rest of the world in the Industrial Revolution, it was despite, not because of her formal education system.”

“Economists have traditionally been leery at mentalités as a factor in long-term economic development. In the budding literature on the economic rise of the West, such factors have been ignored or curtly dismissed. In the past, economists’ hostility to religious factors stems from the incompleteness of such theories. Attitudes were a matter of degree, not of absolutes.”

“The physical and social environment is important in determining the actions of individuals, although it is not solely responsible for the outcome.”

“The distinction between micro- and macroinventions is useful because, as historians of technology emphasize, the word first is hazardous in this literature. . Many technological breakthroughs had a history that began before the event generally regarded as “the invention,” and almost all macroinventions required subsequent improvements to make them operational. Yet in a large number of cases, one or two identifiable events were crucial. Without such breakthroughs technological progress would eventually fizzle out.”

“Hooykaas (1972, p. 100) writes that especially commercial and industrial cities were intellectually dynamic, far more so than sleepy university towns. These cities also tended to be more tolerant of different religions and multilingual. Modern research has found that especially cities involved in Atlantic trade were institutionally dynamic.”

“As Hooykaas (1972, p. 101) argued, the pervasiveness of religion meant that for any idea to become socially acceptable, it made a huge difference whether it was resisted, tolerated, or sponsored by prevalent religious beliefs.”