Economic History Association The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth Author(s): Joel Mokyr Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 285-351 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3875064 Accessed: 30-10-2018 16:13 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press, Economic History Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Economic History This content downloaded from 168.122.222.242 on Tue, 30 Oct 2018 16:13:27 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY VOLUME 65 JUNE 2005 NUMBER 2 The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth JOEL MOKYR The intellectual origins of the Industrial Revolution are traced back to the Baconian program of the seventeenth century, which aimed at expanding the set of useful knowledge and applying natural philosophy to solve technological problems and bring about economic growth. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment in the West carried out this program through a series of institutional developments that both in- creased the amount of knowledge and its accessibility to those who could make best use of it.