Great questions! Lucky for us, there are hundred+ books on the former and a good number on the latter. The first is a *founding* question of sociology! Discussed in Socy 101 classes. Sure! Let's do more research but don't need to invent "studies" for the way article suggests.https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1156260396317253632 …
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delete *for and invent the edit button, ktx.
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I've personally read probably about a dozen *great* books on "Why did the Industrial Revolution start when it did." I mean, it's not even my area of expertise, I just read about dozen great books on the side on this because the topic is so widely studied that it's hard to avoid.
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That said, I'd genuinely read more on this topic, it's a great one. That's why historians, sociologists, economists, STS-folks and many many others have been working on exactly this question for so long. It's a bit overstudied, perhaps, but great questions can bear overstudy.
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Replying to @zeynep
Yeah, but I would say the difference is we need a cross-disciplinary study of why technological revolutions happen when and where they do. Sure, there are hundreds of soc/hist studies of each, hyperspecialized. But we need to study forests and patterns of forests, not trees.
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Replying to @DavidOAtkins
I’ve read at least a dozen great book like that, just on the first question. Of course it’s a very meta-disciplinary question. It’s studied and and discussed like that. Given how interesting and central the industrial revolution is to the world, that’s what you’d expect.
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Replying to @zeynep
Sure. But drawing inferential similarities between it and the internet revolution? Or Roman tech advances? The invention and advance of agriculture? Historians and sociologists tend to be allergic to Jared Diamond-style treatments.
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Replying to @DavidOAtkins
That’s actually why it’s important to be cautious. Diamond has interesting ideas but, well. Too much overfitting.
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Replying to @zeynep
Given the challenges of the day, i'd rather err toward overfitting than underfitting. All academic incentives are to see trees and poke holes in other academics' overfitting, when the moment calls for a greater understanding of the larger truths while solving for variance.
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But the overfitting is easier and already done. And I mean it, the topic is one of the most heavily studied ones in social sciences. Lots of overfitting explanations. I mean I like reading them, too. But really need caution when one is trying to figure out policy.
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