Gregory Clark on "What caused the industrial revolution?"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 184 - Gregory Clark on "What caused the industrial revolution?"

"'Basically nothing else in history had any major and lasting impact on human well-being other than the industrial revolution'...

It's actually quite difficult to link the industrial revolution in any direct way to the scientific revolution. I mean, the first problem you're going to run into is the scientific revolution was well underway by the mid-17th century, more than 100 years before the industrial revolution. In history, time gets compressed. That's the equivalent of three and a half generations. Yet, initially, as far as we can tell, it had really very little impact on that breakthrough towards relatively rapid technological advance.

For example, the Netherlands, the richest country in Europe in the 17th century, was at the forefront of the scientific revolution. The Netherlands never experienced that transformative growth. Instead it kind of gently stagnated into the 18th century, and actually began to become more agricultural as we moved into the 18th century... we know a lot about the details of who transformed England in the industrial revolution period... most of that advance was concentrated in cotton textiles and then later in other textiles.

The innovators there are almost entirely people without any scientific training. Even in the case of Cartwright, who invented the power loom, he was actually trained as a classical scholar and mathematician. He had no practical scientific training. Allegedly he'd never seen anyone weave before he set out to devise a power loom. He just happened to be a rector in the textile area and he was talking to his parishioners and they said, "Well, someone should now invent a power loom because the wages of weavers have gone up extraordinarily."...

Britain was not alone in terms of having the scientific revolution. I mean, the French also had an Enlightenment. The question then becomes, why was Britain so much more successful in the industrial revolution period? There are many more French people than there are British people in that period, why didn't this spread all across Northern Europe and result in multiple centers of innovation?...

There is this interesting marriage between British naval power and prowess, and the size and force of the industrial revolution. The British exported by power… the goods of the industrial revolution. I mean, they opened up India by force, they opened up China, and it magnified then the effect of the industrial revolution.I have to say, that is again an interesting element where the story is so dramatic because of that intermingling of British ability elsewhere in the industrial revolution.

A second very interesting feature of this is, it is interesting that Britain was a much smaller nation than France, but defeated France from mastery of Europe. What is interesting is that Britain just seemed to have a very high level of competence in this period, at almost all of the big things that they endeavored. With less resources than the French, they just developed a mastery of naval warfare. It was quite a brutal mastery as well.

The British actually in this period executed an admiral for failing to be vigorous enough in battle... He was executed for failing to attack strongly enough. I have to say they had a remarkable discipline. The government, again, in the Industrial Revolution showed a remarkable solidity and lack of fear of dramatic changes, of revolution, from below. All of these new innovations inevitably brought riots, attacks on the innovators, destruction of factories. And the government just called out the troops...

The interesting about the British government is that it was innovatively very bold. It enclosed the common field that covered about a quarter of Britain in late 18th century. Again, often with significant local authorization. It created a whole system of paid roads, where people had been able to freely walk up the roads before. When the railways came in, it changed property laws so they could run on a straight line between any two cities.You actually see in Britain in this period that the industrial revolution, it has allied with what seems like quite significant administrative competence within the society in that period...

Modern economists have focused a lot on the idea that the human agent was changed by the adoption of much smaller family sizes. The amount of care and attention that goes to children now is so much greater than in the pre-industrial world. That really has been very significant in changing the human agent.So another mystery about Britain in the industrial revolution is that average family sizes were actually bigger in the industrial revolution than in any period in the previous years. Because of this population boom and because of somewhat better survival of children...

Could it be just the British fell in love with innovation. And, for them, it became romantic, it became something to be admired... the Germans were in love with music and they developed music. They didn't care so much about technology. The British just loved, for a period, technology, in a way that we don't even do in modern society.  Now, I mean, every society has certain things that it promotes and praises. For example, now in Silicon Valley, where I am near, coding is now regarded as a high art in Silicon Valley. It can in fact be one of the most boring activities in the world. But it's acquired a certain romance in the society that's attracted a lot of talented people...

The industrial revolution does not provide any strong argument for saying that you only get technological advance when you have strong and effective copyright and intellectual rights protection. Because very little was protected in this period.

One example is that the first steam engine was patented. The patent was extended. But that actually meant that the person who invented the first working steam engine was never able to get paper rights to it. Because the first one didn't work -- but it was protected. So the second person, who had actually produced a working steam engine, then was prevented from [getting protection].

I have to say I think it's certainly something that we should significantly examine whether we have just moved too far in terms of granting intellectual rights within modern society. And whether those are detracting from innovation."