Podcast: On Humans (LS 41 · TOP 1.5% what is this?)
Episode: Did Science and the Enlightenment Give Europe the Edge? ~ Joel Mokyr
Pub date: 2026-04-22

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"The Industrial Revolution happened after the Scientific Revolution,” says Joel Mokyr, a 2025 Nobel laureate in Economics. “And that is probably not a coincidence.”

In this episode, Mokyr explores the many surprising ways in which science contributed to Europe’s economic rise. And it wasn’t just science. Europe’s culture was going through a broader change, with less emphasis on venerating the ancients and more desire to solve practical problems.

But how much did science actually contribute to the Industrial Revolution? And how much praise do Enlightenment figures deserve today? We discuss this and much more in this episode. As always in this series, we finish with our guests’ reflections on the challenges of our future.

LINKS AND REFERENCES

Do you prefer reading to listening? You can find a summarised essay of this conversation, with a bibliography, at our series page: ⁠https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/news/podcasts/⁠

GREAT DIVERGENCE: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

This episode is part of a series, produced by Warwick University’s ⁠CAGE Research Centre⁠ in collaboration with ⁠On Humans.⁠ The series searches for explanations to why Western Europe and North America overtook China and India as the richest regions of the modern world. Guided by six expert guests, including a winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in economics, we approach this topic with balance and breadth, exploring everything from colonialism and fossil fuels to science and technology.

1 | Why the West? Colonies, fossil fuels, and lessons from China (Kenneth Pomeranz)

2 | Did science and the Enlightenment give Europe the edge? (Joel Mokyr)

3 | Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain? (Robert Allen)

4 | What happened in the East? China, Japan, and the power of the state (Debin Ma)

5 | What about the rest of the world? Measuring the origins of the modern economy (Bishnupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry)

NAMES MENTIONED

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INFO

Guest: Joel Mokyr (⁠Northwestern University)⁠

Host: Ilari Mäkelä (⁠On Humans⁠)

Contact: ⁠greatdivergencepod@gmail.com⁠

Music by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay.

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ilari Mäkelä, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.