Sublime

When the Industrial Revolution released a gusher of usable energy from coal, oil, and falling water, it launched a Great Escape from poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy, and premature death, first in the West and increasingly in the rest of the world (as we shall see in chapters 5–8). And the next leap in human welfare—the end of extreme poverty a

The same logic is at work in the economic sphere too. In 1999 the government of Scotland

Whether there is a long-run direction in evolution, and whether that direction is to be considered progress are of course two different questions.

If we invest money in research, then scientific breakthroughs will accelerate technological progress. New technologies will fuel economic growth,

Evolution advances by taking available resources and cobbling them together to create new uses.

computer scientists have learned to engineer increasingly sophisticated electronic algorithms.

a single overarching theory that unifies all the scientific disciplines from literature and musicology to economics and biology.

new powers.

You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.