GREGORY CLARK’S DARWINIAN THEORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

GREGORY CLARK’S DARWINIAN THEORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. Niall Ferguson in his review of Joyce Appleby’s THE RELENTLESS REVOLUTION in the Times Literary Supplement (July 2, 2010) discusses two Darwinian theories of the Industrial Revolution that are very different. They are Darwinian in the sense that they rely on concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest. The first theory, discussed briefly, is that of Gregory Clark (I posted here on a review of Clark’s book A FAREWELL TO ALMS.) Clark’s theory operates in terms of the natural selection of the people who made the Industrial Revolution. Ferguson writes: “…Clark boldly proposed a Darwinian explanation: natural selection had caused the entrepreneurially able to outbreed the under-achievers in early modern Britain.”

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