The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr

The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr

Chapter 1 
Technology and the Problem 
of Human Knowledge 
Introduction 
The growth of human knowledge is one of the deepest and most 
elusive elements in history. Social scientists, cognitive psychologists, and 
philosophers have struggled with every aspect of it, and not much of a con-

sensus has emerged. The study of what we know about our natural 
environment and how it affects our economy should be of enormous 
interest to economic historians. The growth of knowledge is one of the 
central themes of economic change, and for that reason alone it is far too 
important to be left to the historians of science. 
Discoveries, inventions, and scientific breakthroughs are the very stuff 
of the most exciting writing in economic history. In what follows, my 
approach relies heavily on the history of science, but it differs from much 
current writing in that it addresses squarely the issues of modem economic 
growth. Through most of human history-including the great watershed 
of the Industrial Revolution-new knowledge appeared in a haphazard and 
unpredictable manner, and economic history is thus subject to similar 
contingencies. It therefore needs a special approach if it is to come to grips 
with modem economic growth, one that will take into consideration the 
untidy nature of the historical processes that created modem economic 
civilization of the past quarter-millennium. 
In this book I am not explicitly concerned with "modernization," a 
terms that has fallen on hard times. Economic modernization is associated 
with industrialization, yet economic performance improved in services and 
agriculture. This book does not consider such "modernist" trends as 
urbanization, the rise of a powerful and centralized state, the increase in

political freedom and participation, and the growth in literacy and educa-

tion. It starts from the basic and mundane observation that economic 
performance, our ability to tease out material comforts from niggardly 
nature, has improved immensely in the past two centuries. 
The relationship between economic performance and knowledge 
seems at first glance obvious if not trite. Simply put, technology is knowl-

edge, even if not all knowledge is technological. To be sure, it is hard to 
argue that differences in knowledge alone can explain the gaps in income 
between the prosperous West and poor nations elsewhere. If that were all 
that differed, surely knowledge would flow across boundaries. Yet nobody 
would seriously dispute the proposition that living standards today are 
higher than in the eleventh century primarily because we know more than 
medieval peasants. We do not say that we are smarter (there is little evi-

dence that we are), and we cannot even be sure that we are richer than we 
used to be because we are better educated (although of course we are). The 
central phenomenon of the modem 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 
undreamed-of wealth and security. It revolutionized the structures of fms 
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. 
But who is "we"? What is meant by a society "knowing" something, 
and what kind of knowledge really matters? For the economic historian, 
these propositions prompt further questions. Who knew that which was 
"known"? What was done with this knowledge? How did people who did 
not possess it acquire it? In short, the insights of economic theory need to 
be coupled with the facts and narratives of the history of science and 
technology. 
Useful Knowledge: Some Definitions 
I am neither qualified nor inclined to deal with the many subtleties of 
epistemology and cognitive science that a thorough treatment of knowledge 
as a historical force requires. Instead this book takes a simple and 
straightforward approach to knowledge and its role in technological and 
economic change. It asks how new knowledge helped create modem 
material culture and the prosperity it has brought about. 
What kind of knowledge do I have in mind? My interest in what 
follows is confined to the type of knowledge I will dub usefiz~knowledge. 
The term "useful knowledge" was used by Simon Kuznets (1965, pp. 
85-87) as the source of modem economic growth. One could debate at 

The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr