From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 22:55:30 MST
Steve writes
> I don't recall if anyone else has already done a post about
> this book but I am so impressed with it that I couldn't let
> it pass. This is an excellent and very important work of
> economic history IMHO which is of particular interest to
> anyone of an extropian bent.
Much appreciated!
> Joel Mokyr.
> The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge
> Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Joel Mokyr's name has been coming up a lot lately. Our
book group read his excellent "Lever of Riches" last year,
which made some progress towards understanding the role
of technology in the development of the West, and had good
discussions of the much earlier work of Needham et al.
He also wrote "Why Did the Irish Starve?". This book is
out of print, but the totally excellent book by Tom Bethell,
"The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the
Ages" discusses Mokyr's analysis. (It seems today that
the "Irish Question" is "why did they starve", whereas
that phrase meant "what to do?" 150 years ago!) Bethell
takes the analysis one step further than Mokyr, who really
didn't answer the question. But Bethell admits that the
data is still rolling in, and though he is confident that
there is enough data to determine the answer, it won't be
in for a while yet.
Lee
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