As Holland studied Roman or Spartan culture, and its brutality, he noticed that it exuded a morality that was not his. Christian influence on Western civilization is so profound that it has come to be hidden from view. The Romans might have the rule of the world; the Greeks might have their philosophy; the Persians … Read more
By enduring the most agonizing fate imaginable, he had conquered death itself. ‘Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. The utter strangeness of all this, for … Read more
Religion is not the antithesis of technology – in many ways, it is the prelude to it David F. Noble seeks out to illustrate a counter-intuitive fact. The greatest scientific minds of the past, and present, have religious beliefs, it is not that their religious beliefs are coincidental, but that they form the very basis … Read more
“The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” is a book written by Matt Ridley, first published in 2010. The book presents a comprehensive historical narrative and argument, asserting that human progress and prosperity are a direct result of market exchange and specialization of labor. Ridley starts his argument by looking at the beginning of human civilization … Read more
People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialised production for diversified consumption. This world can already be glimpsed on the web, in what John Barlow calls ‘dot-communism’: a workforce of free agents bartering their ideas and efforts barely interested in whether the barter yields ‘real’ money. The explosion of interest in … Read more
In the mid-1970s it was briefly fashionable for journalists to write scare stories about the recent cooling of the globe, which was presented as undiluted bad news. Now it is fashionable for them to write scare stories about the recent warming of the globe, which is presented as undiluted bad news. Here are two quotes … Read more
A constant drumbeat of pessimism usually drowns out any triumphalist song of the kind I have vented in this book so far. If you say the world has been getting better you may get away with being called naive and insensitive. If you say the world is going to go on getting better, you are … Read more
Today, the average person on the planet consumes power at the rate of about 2,500 watts, or to put it a different way, uses 600 calories per second. About 85 per cent o f that comes from burning coal, oil and gas, the rest from nuclear and hydro (wind, solar and biomass are mere asterisks … Read more
The Malthusian crisis comes not as a result of population growth directly, but because of decreasing specialisation. Increasing self-sufficiency is the very signature of a civilisation under stress, the definition of a falling standard of living. Until 1800 this was how every economic boom ended: with a partial return to self-sufficiency driven by predation by … Read more
Not long ago, demographers expected new technology tohollow out cities as people began to telecommute from tranquil suburbs. But no – even in weightless industries like finance people prefer to press into ever closer contact with each other inglass towers to do their exchanging and specializing, and they are prepared to pay absurdly high rents … Read more