Page 90 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 2 The Production of Enamelled Porcelain and Knowledge Transfer

transmitted and formalized knowledge, especially propositional knowledge, made

innovation easier.

The social and institutional dissemination of knowledge inevitably led Mokyr to

address the question of who controls knowledge and its dissemination. He argues the

creations of new mediums and institutions reduced the access costs, therefore useful

knowledge could be distributed more effectively. He argues that natural philosophers,

engineers, mechanics, chemists and other ‘vital few’ and their contacts and exchange

make the communication between those who knew things (“savants”) and those who

made things (“fabricants”) more effective. 35 Mokyr claims that the Industrial

Enlightenment fostered a close collaboration and interaction between natural

philosophy and technical craftsman that advanced technological innovation and

progress, which could not be observed in other cultures, neither in the Ottoman

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Empire, Japan, India, Africa and China.

Follow this discussion, the role played by the state and institutions in terms of

knowledge dissemination and technological innovation became a crucial point of

debate among historians to explain why China did not develop modern technology.

For example, Davids explained that because of the lack of support from religious

institutions in China after 1500, ‘propositional’ knowledge only grew in a partial way

and the spheres of ‘prescriptive’ and ‘propositional’ knowledge did not become

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strongly interlinked, which constrained innovation.

35 Joel Mokyr, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth’, The Journal of
Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 2 (June 2005), p.309.
36 Ibid., p.323. More on Industrial Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, see, Joel Mokyr,
The Enlightened Economy: Britain and the Industrial Revolution 1700-1850 (London: Penguin
Books, 2009), chapter 2 and 5.
37 Karel Davids, Religion, Technology, and the Great and Little Divergences, (Leiden: Brill,
2012), pp.173-188.
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