I tend to agree with you here. I don't think the industrial revolution was inevitable, but rather just the right factors and conditions coming together at just the right time.
Asking this question though is a bit like asking where the “Great Filter” is, in terms of Fermis paradox.
Indeed. I'm sure industrialisation is one of those Great Filters. And now we have next ones. Sustainable growth and AI.
Would also be interesting once we develop interstellar travel, what if Galaxy is full not only of microbial life (which I bet is the case), but even societies, most of which extinct, because they were agricultural forever? That would be some very cool Archaeology to explore.
You sort of touch on this in your point about Britain and fossil fuels, though not directly. I'm curious if you generally agree with this logic or not. The idea being that it's actually very hard to imagine a useful steam engine being invented for any purpose besides pumping water out of large coal mines, in a society that has very large demand for coal for basic heating because wood isn't available in sufficient quantity, and coal is. So even in a society with a culture of commercial invention, if there's not a practical use-case for a highly inefficient initial steam engine, maybe the technology never goes anywhere.
This at least raises the question, if the island of Great Britain lacked significant coal deposits and the economic history of Europe were otherwise largely unchanged, how much later might the Industrial Revolution have happened? Perhaps other Commercial parts of Europe would have eventually deforested to the point that they made more use of coal and went down the path of building ever-better steam engines. Or perhaps not.
Devereaux's argument at least makes me wonder to what degree timberland per capita really differs from place to place within the core countries of NW Europe circa 1700, and what the rate of change was.
Great comment, and thanks for the link. I had not heard of it and it looks very interesting. Rather than answer here, I think that I will write one or more articles on the issue.
A quick answer is that Britain could have gone a long way towards industrialization using wood instead of coal, but even with imports they would have eventually run out. USA followed that path in 19th Century. The Netherlands did the same with peat. Wood is fine for short-term, but it is not a long-term substitute for coal and other fossil fuels.
Wood is so much less energy-dense than coal that it could not possibly lead to an industrialized Europe or industrialized world.
Important and persuasive. The Arc of History is disturbing naive belief that probably leads to losing social will. "We Got Lucky.. and it's a lot of hard work to maintain", leads to a very different set of implications.
I believe these investigations are the true and proper role of History. That History will be critical for shaping the good of Humanity, our Ecosystem, and successfully navigating the future. In a society that is regressing, history is the first to go.
This is an interesting article on a topic I was thinking for a while 'why did it take so long for Scientific and Industrial revolutions to happen? It happened only 200 years ago out of 200 000 years of human existence and over 10 000 years of various civilizations.
I would argue with some minor details, but I like the core idea that social structure of Agricultural societies doesn't incentivise innovation at a mass scale.
It's also curious to think about this in our modern geopolitical context of the new Cold War. We have a block or authoritarian countries that want to come back to the world of 19th century politics, and Western democracies opposing them on the other side. Each has its advantages in warfare, but this idea gives me hope that once western societies realise the threat (which takes a while), they will be able to innovate much faster and at much more sustainable level than the new Axis (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea). Also, modern West has accumulated a lot of inefficient and outdated policies (though Idk if that wasn't the case always), especially those preventing robust growth. I hope that the new threat will cause our societies to rapidly modernize and increase innovation and growth.
But what if you consider the evolution of societies as a Darwinian process ?
Meaning that, on the long term, all the possibilities are tried, the way one is statistically 100% sure to open a lock if he has time to try all the possible keys.
So as coal (or other fossil fuel deposits) were available not too far from the surface in several areas of the world, sooner or later all the necessary political and technological conditions would be locally met to unleash the full potential of coal and then an industrial revolution (and its consequences for our maybe-not-so-smart specie).
I even stumbled on a fascinating (but I agree a little bit far-fetched) idea some time ago. Kind of sad joke actually but anyway… For about 100 millions years, a quite short period of its existence, the planet Earth is much colder than it use to be as way too much carbon was buried underground during the Carboniferous era. Having polar ice caps, even from time to time, is not the norm. But in just a few million years, starting from one of the most insignificant life-form, biological evolution managed to give birth to a specie with the very unique ability to put back enough carbon in the atmosphere to reverse the trend and restore the average global temperature. We called the process "industrial revolution". And we've almost taken it to its logical conclusion.
I am not sure that you can derive 100% certainty of a specific outcome from Darwinian evolution. Biological evolution is full of contingencies that are not inevitable.
As for human history, it might be correct that, given infinite time, a human society would inevitably reach the IR.
Assuming just a few thousand years of development since the agricultural revolution, however, I still find it unlikely.
Coal is not the biggest constraint. I believe the biggest constraint is the productivity of agriculture. Without productive agriculture, IR is simply not possible as all the people will need to be working in the fields. Agriculture is really hard to innovate. There are so many constraints based on geography (water, soil, growing season, altitude, domesticated plants, domesticated animals) and experimentation risks death from a bad harvest.
Darwinian not in a sense that anything is possible. Indeed six legged vertebrates were ruled out long time ago. But more in a sense that if there is some energy or food available, ie an ecological niche, some random mutation will happen and allow some species to make us of it.
And indeed the possibility to feed a large urban work force was an important factor.
But England has the ability to extract food surplus elsewhere and to transport it on long distance very early (all the way from Russia and the US). So wasn't food availability much more an economic and political issue (between landlords and factory owners) than a purely agricultural one ? Until the Corn Laws were repealed and the IR really flourish.
Darwinian evolution is about survival and reproduction, not increasing material standard of living. To the best of my knowledge, no species other than humans has been able to create a sizable food surplus.
Farmers have to first create a food surplus before it can be extracted by someone else. Importing food does not change the fundamental problem, it just shifts the problem to another geography.
The vast majority of agricultural systems created very little food surplus per family. In those systems, the vast majority of the people are forced to spend most of their waking hours just producing enough food to survive. You can increase the number of farmers, but then they just consume more food. They simply do not produce a large enough food surplus per family because their agricultural system is not productive enough.
Until you solve that problem, nothing else matters.
Commercial societies were the first to solve that problem:
The Corn Laws only mattered because the USA developed extremely productive agricultural systems, largely by copying what the English already achieved and then adding additional mechanization. This created a massive food surplus that could be exported. Without that surplus, the Corn Laws do not matter.
I tend to agree with you here. I don't think the industrial revolution was inevitable, but rather just the right factors and conditions coming together at just the right time.
Asking this question though is a bit like asking where the “Great Filter” is, in terms of Fermis paradox.
Interesting analogy. I had not thought of that. For those who are not aware of the Great Filter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
PS. Didn't expect to see you here, I guess I found out about Michael Magoon on notes from subscribing to you
I am everywhere :)
Indeed. I'm sure industrialisation is one of those Great Filters. And now we have next ones. Sustainable growth and AI.
Would also be interesting once we develop interstellar travel, what if Galaxy is full not only of microbial life (which I bet is the case), but even societies, most of which extinct, because they were agricultural forever? That would be some very cool Archaeology to explore.
Yes. The more I think about it, there are probably many "filters." I don't think that bacterial life is particularly rare.
Good discussion. Have you read this piece (or related arguments): https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/
You sort of touch on this in your point about Britain and fossil fuels, though not directly. I'm curious if you generally agree with this logic or not. The idea being that it's actually very hard to imagine a useful steam engine being invented for any purpose besides pumping water out of large coal mines, in a society that has very large demand for coal for basic heating because wood isn't available in sufficient quantity, and coal is. So even in a society with a culture of commercial invention, if there's not a practical use-case for a highly inefficient initial steam engine, maybe the technology never goes anywhere.
This at least raises the question, if the island of Great Britain lacked significant coal deposits and the economic history of Europe were otherwise largely unchanged, how much later might the Industrial Revolution have happened? Perhaps other Commercial parts of Europe would have eventually deforested to the point that they made more use of coal and went down the path of building ever-better steam engines. Or perhaps not.
Devereaux's argument at least makes me wonder to what degree timberland per capita really differs from place to place within the core countries of NW Europe circa 1700, and what the rate of change was.
Great comment, and thanks for the link. I had not heard of it and it looks very interesting. Rather than answer here, I think that I will write one or more articles on the issue.
A quick answer is that Britain could have gone a long way towards industrialization using wood instead of coal, but even with imports they would have eventually run out. USA followed that path in 19th Century. The Netherlands did the same with peat. Wood is fine for short-term, but it is not a long-term substitute for coal and other fossil fuels.
Wood is so much less energy-dense than coal that it could not possibly lead to an industrialized Europe or industrialized world.
Important and persuasive. The Arc of History is disturbing naive belief that probably leads to losing social will. "We Got Lucky.. and it's a lot of hard work to maintain", leads to a very different set of implications.
I believe these investigations are the true and proper role of History. That History will be critical for shaping the good of Humanity, our Ecosystem, and successfully navigating the future. In a society that is regressing, history is the first to go.
This is an interesting article on a topic I was thinking for a while 'why did it take so long for Scientific and Industrial revolutions to happen? It happened only 200 years ago out of 200 000 years of human existence and over 10 000 years of various civilizations.
I would argue with some minor details, but I like the core idea that social structure of Agricultural societies doesn't incentivise innovation at a mass scale.
It's also curious to think about this in our modern geopolitical context of the new Cold War. We have a block or authoritarian countries that want to come back to the world of 19th century politics, and Western democracies opposing them on the other side. Each has its advantages in warfare, but this idea gives me hope that once western societies realise the threat (which takes a while), they will be able to innovate much faster and at much more sustainable level than the new Axis (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea). Also, modern West has accumulated a lot of inefficient and outdated policies (though Idk if that wasn't the case always), especially those preventing robust growth. I hope that the new threat will cause our societies to rapidly modernize and increase innovation and growth.
Interesting.
But what if you consider the evolution of societies as a Darwinian process ?
Meaning that, on the long term, all the possibilities are tried, the way one is statistically 100% sure to open a lock if he has time to try all the possible keys.
So as coal (or other fossil fuel deposits) were available not too far from the surface in several areas of the world, sooner or later all the necessary political and technological conditions would be locally met to unleash the full potential of coal and then an industrial revolution (and its consequences for our maybe-not-so-smart specie).
I even stumbled on a fascinating (but I agree a little bit far-fetched) idea some time ago. Kind of sad joke actually but anyway… For about 100 millions years, a quite short period of its existence, the planet Earth is much colder than it use to be as way too much carbon was buried underground during the Carboniferous era. Having polar ice caps, even from time to time, is not the norm. But in just a few million years, starting from one of the most insignificant life-form, biological evolution managed to give birth to a specie with the very unique ability to put back enough carbon in the atmosphere to reverse the trend and restore the average global temperature. We called the process "industrial revolution". And we've almost taken it to its logical conclusion.
I am not sure that you can derive 100% certainty of a specific outcome from Darwinian evolution. Biological evolution is full of contingencies that are not inevitable.
As for human history, it might be correct that, given infinite time, a human society would inevitably reach the IR.
Assuming just a few thousand years of development since the agricultural revolution, however, I still find it unlikely.
Coal is not the biggest constraint. I believe the biggest constraint is the productivity of agriculture. Without productive agriculture, IR is simply not possible as all the people will need to be working in the fields. Agriculture is really hard to innovate. There are so many constraints based on geography (water, soil, growing season, altitude, domesticated plants, domesticated animals) and experimentation risks death from a bad harvest.
I write more here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-agriculture-is-the-humanitys
Darwinian not in a sense that anything is possible. Indeed six legged vertebrates were ruled out long time ago. But more in a sense that if there is some energy or food available, ie an ecological niche, some random mutation will happen and allow some species to make us of it.
And indeed the possibility to feed a large urban work force was an important factor.
But England has the ability to extract food surplus elsewhere and to transport it on long distance very early (all the way from Russia and the US). So wasn't food availability much more an economic and political issue (between landlords and factory owners) than a purely agricultural one ? Until the Corn Laws were repealed and the IR really flourish.
Darwinian evolution is about survival and reproduction, not increasing material standard of living. To the best of my knowledge, no species other than humans has been able to create a sizable food surplus.
Farmers have to first create a food surplus before it can be extracted by someone else. Importing food does not change the fundamental problem, it just shifts the problem to another geography.
The vast majority of agricultural systems created very little food surplus per family. In those systems, the vast majority of the people are forced to spend most of their waking hours just producing enough food to survive. You can increase the number of farmers, but then they just consume more food. They simply do not produce a large enough food surplus per family because their agricultural system is not productive enough.
Until you solve that problem, nothing else matters.
Commercial societies were the first to solve that problem:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/farming-in-commercial-societies
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-agriculture-made-commercial-societies
I do not believe this achievement was inevitable.
The Corn Laws only mattered because the USA developed extremely productive agricultural systems, largely by copying what the English already achieved and then adding additional mechanization. This created a massive food surplus that could be exported. Without that surplus, the Corn Laws do not matter.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-american-farmers-mechanized-agriculture