SOLAR ECLIPSES AND THE ORIGINS OF CRITICAL THINKING AND COMPLEXITY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Litina, Anastasia; Fernandez, Eric Roca
• 署名单位: University of Macedonia; Universite Clermont Auvergne (UCA); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD)
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/uead117
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1545-1577
• 关键词: institutions; curiosity

摘要

This paper relates curiosity to economic development through its impact on human capital formation and technological advancement in pre-modern times. More specifically, we propose that exposure to inexplicable phenomena prompts curiosity and thinking in an attempt to comprehend these mysteries, thus raising human capital and technology, and, ultimately, fostering growth. We focus on solar eclipses as one particular trigger of curiosity and empirically establish a robust relationship between their number and several proxies of economic prosperity. We also offer evidence compatible with the human capital and technological increases we postulate, finding a more intricate thinking process and more developed technology among societies more exposed to solar eclipses. Among other factors, we study the development of written language, the playing of strategy games and the accuracy of folkloric explanations for eclipses, as well as the number of tasks undertaken in a society, their relative complexity and broad technological indicators. Lastly, we document rising curiosity both at the social and individual levels: societies incorporate more terms related to curiosity and eclipses in their folklore, and people who observed a total solar eclipse during their childhood were more likely to have entered a scientific occupation.