COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	rich[w86,jmc]		How the West Grew Rich by Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell,jr.
C00004 ENDMK
C⊗;
rich[w86,jmc]		How the West Grew Rich by Nathan Rosenberg and L.E. Birdzell,jr.

	The book has many useful insights but perhaps misses a
few possibilities.

	1. The role of the ideology of progress as articulated by
Bacon may itself have been important.

	2. Even when artisan inventors didn't know much science, they
were influenced by the ideas of science, and held being scientific
as an ideal.

	3. The book leaves out the specific events of rejection of
technological progress and Western contacts by the Chinese in
the middle of the 15th century and the Japanese around the beginning
of the 17th.  In both cases Confucian doctrine is said to have
been important, but exactly what it was isn't clear.

	4. One of the Western successes may have been a better
solution of agency problems than was achieved elsewhere.

	5. It has to be emphasized that a take-off to continuous
progress was a rare event.  It could have happened several times
in the history of various civilizations but actuallly happened
only once.