the Modern Revolution to transform the entire world. Innovation increased
human control over the energy and resources of the biosphere. Modern forms
of education and science have created formal structures that encourage and
sustain innovation.
Rapid innovation drove many other changes. It increased available resources,
allowing humans to multiply—creating larger, denser, and more complex
societies than those of the Agrarian era. Human numbers rose from about
250 million in 1000 C.E., to about 950 million in 1800 C.E., to about 6
billion in 2000 C.E. Larger and denser communities meant new lifeways
and new power structures. Wage-earning replaced peasant farming as the
normal way of earning a living. Governments became larger, more powerful,
and more intrusive, but also more responsive to the needs and capacities of
their subjects. Human history became global. Since the 16th century, human
societies have exchanged goods,
ideas, diseases, and people within
a single global network, and rapid
improvements in communications
and transportation have steadily
tightened these links.
Our species has begun to transform
the biosphere. By some estimates,
humans now control 25% to 40% of
all the energy that enters the biosphere through photosynthesis (Christian,
Maps of Time, p. 140). Modern weaponry is so powerful that humans could,
if they chose, destroy much of the biosphere within a few hours. Increasing
human control of biospheric resources has affected other species through
loss of habitat and increasing extinctions, and it is beginning to transform the
global climate system. John McNeill writes, “For most of Earth’s history,
microbes played the leading role of all life in shaping the atmosphere. In
the twentieth century, humankind stumbled blindly into this role” (McNeill,
Something New Under the Sun, p. 51).
How can we explain these vast transformations? I will focus on accelerating
innovation, because this is the key to most other aspects of the Modern
Revolution. So why did innovation accelerate so sharply? Economists and
The dominant groups
are not tribute-takers but
entrepreneurs, who make their
wealth by trading ef¿ ciently
on competitive markets.