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Connecting the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions: The Role of Practical Mathematics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2022

Morgan Kelly Open the ORCID record for Morgan Kelly [Opens in a new window]  and
Cormac Ó Gráda
Morgan Kelly
Affiliation:
Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: Morgan.Kelly@ucd.ie
Cormac Ó Gráda*
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus at the School of Economics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: cormac.ograda@ucd.ie
*
E-mail: cormac.ograda@ucd.ie
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Abstract

Disputes over whether the Scientific Revolution contributed to the Industrial Revolution begin with the common assumption that natural philosophers and artisans formed distinct groups. In reality, these groups merged together through a diverse group of applied mathematics teachers, textbook writers, and instrument makers catering to a market ranging from navigators and surveyors to bookkeepers. Besides its direct economic contribution in diffusing useful numerical skills, this “practical mathematics” facilitated later industrialization in two ways. First, a large supply of instrument and watch makers provided Britain with a pool of versatile, mechanically skilled labor to build the increasingly complicated machinery of the late eighteenth century. Second, the less well-known but equally revolutionary innovations in machine tools—which, contrary to the Habbakuk thesis, occurred largely in Britain during the 1820s and 1830s to mass-produce interchangeable parts for iron textile machinery—drew on a technology of exact measurement developed for navigational and astronomical instruments.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 841 - 873
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

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Footnotes

We are grateful to Joel Mokyr and Peter Solar for extensive comments on earlier versions. The editors and referees of this Journal helped sharpen the arguments and presentation.

References

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