The term "industrial revolution" was coined by the French and not really used until Arnold Toynbee in 1888. Ricardo and Malthus had pretty much declared that there could not be an industrial revolution; however, economists were all but converted to the idea just a few years later (1890's.) Two schools of thought came out of the industrial revolution: 1) those who saw the social, political, intellectual changes were the result of the industrial revolution, and 2) those who saw that the specialization of labor was the end result. "The main line of descent from Adam Smith through...Thomas Kuhn, can be described as a preoccupation with the causes and the consequences of specialization." (p.338)
A for Basil.
ReplyDeleteThe point Warsh is making here is that most of "what we know" about the industrial revolution does not come from economists: it comes from sociologists, anthropologists and historians.