I am reading a wonderful book by William Rosen. It is about the creation of the steam engine in the 18th century. But it is also about many things that made this creation possible, of which the most important is the creation of protection for the property rights of inventors.
The book is very readable and entertaining. You may think you know everything about John Locke, but did you know that he translated the fable of the sun and the wind competing to remove a coat?
There is an excursion, for instance, into the rivalry between Francis Bacon and Edward Coke. Did you know that while Coke promoted patent protection, Bacon thought science should be funded by the state, and wrote about an ideal society sort of like Plato’s Republic?
And while you may have read about the familiar story of Newcomen’s and Watt’s insights, you probably haven’t seen them traced back to separate insights about steam and heat, which go back to the ancients.
In my opinion, this is far superior to the Pinker book about the Enlightenment about which everyone is talking. The author calls it the “industrial enlightenment.”
/sb
