Why did the industrial revolution begin in Northwestern Europe in the 1800th century?
Until the Industrial Revolution, humanity lived under the Malthusian trap. Increasing population leveled any economic progress. The average person was therefore as poor in the 18th century as in the Stone Age and life expectancy was the same. Towards the end of the 18th century, humanity broke out of the Malthusian trap. There are many theories as to why this happened first in Northwestern Europe and not anywhere else like China, India or the Middle East. Here I argue that necessary factors for the industrial revolution were present in Northwestern Europe in the 18th century for the first time in history.
Progress follows from creative processes. We find creativity where new inventions, knowledge, adaptations, institutions and so on arise. Creativity means the creation of a new unexpected product that does not unequivocally and obviously follow from the foregoing. What is new about the product has never existed before and is thus created ex nihilo. However, it is not enough that novelties contain surprising and unpredictable properties. The product must also be meaningful or useful.
All creative processes follow from selectionist mechanisms. It is a historical coincidence that the first selectionist process was described by Darwin (Metcalfe 1999). Three conditions underlie selectionist mechanisms. There must be variants that are copied. The different variants often have different influences on survival and copying. The copies must be similar to the parent variants and are usually discrete. Through interaction with an independent arena, some variants prevail over others. This takes place in that the variants (genotypic level) exert their effect through a higher level (phenotypic level) that interacts with the independent arena. The variants that are selected, represent creativity. If the copying of variants is accurate enough, creative development follows (Ridley 2000).
For cultural or economic development, the genotypic level is strings of words (sentences) that are located in the brain as memory or externalized on a medium such as writing on paper. The phenotypic level is the meaning or artefacts represented by these sentences. The external arena is the environment that includes other people and their products such as money. Creativity in the direct transfer of information from the environment to the brain is impossible due to the learning paradox, the induction problem and the second law of thermodynamics (Elitzur 1994, Cziko 1995, Naess 2003). All new knowledge therefore start s as guesses in an individual brain and never comes first from outside.
Economic growth is a result of entrepreneurs speculating in the market as explained by Ludwig von Mises (von Mises 1963). The price mechanisms represent the external arena that determines the outcome through profit or loss. This is a selectionist process where the speculations are genotypically represented by the language either orally or in writing. Private property rights ensure many independent speculations. Profit leads to further copying.
Before the written language, the speculations were stored as memory in individual brains. However, memory is fragile and copying is often inaccurate. Oral culture is therefore with limited creative potential. This potential expanded considerably after the invention of writing and especially the alphabet and led to economic growth in ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. The speculations could be preserved accurately over a long period on external material such as papyrus. The invention of the printing press increased the potential for economic growth even more as copying the speculations could now take place cheaply, quickly and accurately.
Written language, money, printing and private property were available elsewhere as in Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India and China. However, several necessary factors for exponential growth were only present in Northwestern Europe in the 18th century and explain that this was where the selectionist mechanisms could start the industrial revolution with sustained growth for the first time in history.
Northwestern Europe was historically a primitive outskirts compared to the ancient civilizations. Neolithic individualism lasted longer and was therefore stronger in Northwestern Europe than elsewhere (Todd 2019). The Catholic Church's defense of the nuclear family may also have contributed to the maintenance of individualism (Henrich 2020). It is likely that private property rights in an individualistic culture lead to more independent speculations than in collectivist cultures that characterized the ancient civilizations.
Outside Europe, authorities suppressed or banned the printing press. However, in Europe competition among many small states ensured the preservation of the printing press. Without the printing press, Protestantism would never have taken off. Luther brought the Bible into the center of Christian instruction (sola scriptura). It became important that each individual learn from the Bible directly and not through the priests. This led to a rapid increase in the number of literate people. Between 5 and 10 percent of English men could read and write in the year 1500. The percentage rose to 28 percent in 1600 and 56 percent in 1750 (Dudley 2012). The Catholic Church prevented the spread of literacy because personal study of the Bible was perceived as blasphemy (Todd 2019).
Printing led to a homogenization of the language and created a large network of potential partners. Important inventions are often due to a combination of two or more different technologies. A large network increased the likelihood of collaboration between people trained in different technological traditions.
A quantitative study of energy production as a surrogate for economic growth and the development of information technology including literacy over the last 100,000 years compiled by Ian Morris (Morris 2013) shows a strong correlation between the development of information technology and the growth of energy production (r = 0.73) (Naess 2020). Another study shows that there is a strong correlation between the time from fifty percent of men were literate in a country to the time of the escape from the Malthusian trap (r = 0.86) (Todd 2019).
The above shows that the preconditions for the industrial revolution were first present in Northwestern Europe in the 18th century. Both printing based on the alphabet with high literacy, an individualistic culture that opened up many independent speculations, and many small states were historically unique and triggered exponential growth based on selectionist market mechanisms. The ancient civilizations of the Middle East, India, and China opposed the printing press, represented collectivist cultures, or lacked the alphabet (China).
The most important thing for the escape from the Malthusian trap was the widespread use of the printing press that enabled a highly efficient selectionist process including a high degree of literacy. It is therefore no coincidence that the industrial revolution started in a historic provincial outskirts of the Eurasian continent and could not have started before the 1800th century.
References
Cziko, G. (1995). Without miracles. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.
Dudley, L. (2012). Mothers of Innovation. Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Elitzur, A. C. (1994). "Let there be life." Journal of Theoretical Biology 168: 429-459.
Henrich, J. (2020). The Weirdest People in the World, Allen Lane.
Metcalfe, J. S. (1999). Darwinian Dynamics: Economics and Creative Destruction. London, Routledge.
Morris, I. (2013). The Measure of Civilization. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Naess, H. (2003). "Instructionism is impossible due to the second law of thermodynamics." Journal of Mind and Behavior 24: 57-66.
Naess, H. (2020). "Evolution of written language technology and not state building causes positive economic growth." American Research Journal of History and Culture 6: 1-8.
Ridley, M. (2000). Mendel's demon. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Todd, E. (2019). Lineages of Modernity. Cambridge, Polity Press.
von Mises, L. (1963). Human Action. Chicago, Contemporary Books, Inc.