作者：MOKYR, J
摘要：Technological progress depends for its success on a conducive social environment. The resistance to innovation is identified as a central element governing the success of new inventions. Such resistance usually takes the form of non-market processes. It consists of vested interests, whose assets are jeopardized by new techniques, as well as by intellectuals who are opposed to new technology on principle. The role of resistance in the British and French economies during the Industrial Revolutio...
作者：CLARK, G
摘要：The Postan thesis is that medieval agriculture had low yields because there was insufficient pasture to keep the arable land fertile. This argument (and variants of it) has become an orthodox technological explanation for low preindustrial yields. Yet the thesis, on its face, implies that early cultivators were ignorant, irrational, or completely custom bound. This article develops a revised Postan thesis, in which medieval cultivators knew that pasture restored fertility but were unwilling to...
