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Discussion of Joel Mokyr’s “The Great Synergy”

Hans-Joachim Voth

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

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Intellectual arbitrage The claim that the Enlightenment is a turning point for the

combination of science with applied technology goes back to Albert Musson and Eric Robinson (1969) – stress a continuum from applied to pure science as one factor that contributed to the IR

Rupert Hall (1974) “What did the Industrial Revolution in Britain Owe to Science?” – almost nothing

Margaret Jacob (1988, 1997) cultural interpretation – stresses the “application of scientific knowledge and experimental forms of inquiry to the making of goods, the moving of heavy objects…” & link with IR

JM – takes the looser, cultural approach from Jacob, and looks not for the immediate payoff of the Enlightenment in the first IR in Britain but over the long run Lays the foundations for the science-based technology that takes over

from ~1830 Destroys the bad institutions that stand in the way of continuous

growth

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Thinking about long lags + causality Mokyr accepts that there is very little immediate benefit from

the English societies etc. His claim rests on the long-run benefits. The claim easier for technology, harder for economic policy Peak of protectionism actually in the early 19C (Corn Laws) +

ban on exports of machinery, reversed only 1842 [ironic exception: steam]

What does it mean that the increasing use of science-based technology after ~1830 depended crucially on the Enlightenment? Without the Enlightenment, it could not have happened? Specifying the “right counterfactual” is difficult But what about the resurgence of scholarship in the late Middle

Ages? How much cumulative knowledge would there be without the rediscovery of ancient texts, of the idea of libraries, of book-printing?

The Renaissance? How much science-based progress would there be without the open science that spreads through the Italian states after 1500 [Paul David]?

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Alternatives: Diderot or Napoleon? Institutional improvement

In Mokyr’s story, an essentially benign process that is driven by better understanding of rent seeking’s detrimental impact – slow incorporation of the wisdom of the Wealth of Nations into policy

A somewhat less benign interpretation – continuous warfare in 18C requires not only the political centre to assert control over minor princes etc. (1500-1700), but to compete economically Austrian reforms under Emperors Maria-Theresa and Joseph

unthinkable without the Prussian challenge Without the Napoleonic invasions, no reforms in Prussia,

Russia, the Low Countries Even in the realm of education – technical schools (mining

academies), Ecole Polytechnique etc. in part inspired by the idea of compensating the British advantage in industry

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Alternatives: Rousseau or Humboldt? What is close in timing is not the Enlightenment as a

philosophical movement that accords high importance to science, but 19th century positivism + the Humboldt-inspired research university Industrial chemistry Mathematics applied to optics Technical universities and the rise of R&D

Could these have existed without the Enlightenment? The Enlightenment as the idea of open discourse, of human

progress, of disinterested inquiry – no; yet these have deeper roots in European philosophy

The Enlightenment as a philosophical movement with a highly specific set of beliefs about human nature etc. – probably yes

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Just how strong is the link between science and technology even after 1850 really? Canonical example: organic chemistry, but

Metallurgy: “it was a sector in which the technologist typically ‘got there first’,

developing powerful new technologies in advance of systematic guidance by science…”

- Mowery and Rosenberg 1989 This is not unusual – Wengenroth (2000 based on

König) argues that even electrical engineering in the 19th century became less and less of an applied science, and more practice-led; US technical colleges only teach basic principles

Mechanical engineering largely based on shop-culture

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Very close links science/technology (except for organic chemistry) a 20C phenomenon

for the surge in 19C technologies, Wengenroth (2000) argues that „science was but one instrument for innovation, and certainly not the most important one. Designing the organizational framework of factories, craft knowledge, tinkering, and building on experience that mushroomed with much-intensified industrial activity – all these [were] more productive venues of industrial growth than science.“

This would suggest either an additional or an alternative way of explaining the surge in growth + (slow) rise in TFP after 1850 – as much a (long-run) consequence of growth as its cause