Good question, probably because energy doesn’t seem pivotal for the specific case of the threshing machine? It was clearly a crucial piece of infrastructure in many other cases. I consider it part of the technology flywheel, along with other fundamental enabling technologies such as precision manufacturing. There’s a good argument that it is the most important of all such fundamental technologies.
So in your specific example of the threshing machine:
Surplus energy is required such that enough of the population are freed from subsistence and agriculture to specialize in other things.
Even more surplus energy is required for the creation/upkeep of cities, which are a prerequisite for technological innovation/growth (high density of different specialists living alongside eachother, as well as a labour force for factories/mass production).
And the railroads that enabled the widespread distribution of threshing machines—obviously highly energy intensive, and coincided with massive growth in coal use (steam engines originally invented for pumping water out of coal mines)
You seem to be labelling energy as a technology? If so, I think this is wrong. Energy is a fundamental input. Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
My position is that all technological growth is dependent on sufficient surplus energy. That certain levels of technological and social complexity have minimum surplus energy requirements.
So to answer the question in your title directly: because there wasn’t enough surplus energy available. This was the single most important bottleneck at every stage in our development. It remains the single most important bottleneck today.
Vaclav Smil is one of the better people to read on this subject. And if I remember correctly he has an interesting example about the plough (in Energy and Civilization) - an even more headscratching example of ‘why wasn’t this invented waaaay earlier?’
Your examples of energy usage enabling further economic growth are good ones, particularly the railroads, which absolutely depended on the ability to harness wood or coal for locomotion. But I disagree with how you interpret these examples and the rest of your analysis.
Re:
You seem to be labelling energy as a technology? If so, I think this is wrong. Energy is a fundamental input.
Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
I don’t know what it means for energy to be a “fundamental input.”
When you say:
So to answer the question in your title directly: because there wasn’t enough surplus energy available.
I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
In short, surplus energy is not exogenous to technological or economic growth, it is endogenous.
>Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
To quote my post:
>Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
And back to you (emphasis mine):
>I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
I agree that technologies increased our access to surplus energy. I strongly disagree that they ‘created’ it.
Fossil fuels are exogenous to tech, right? They’re an energy store that was created long before homo sapiens turned up. And the quality/quantity of this energy store is huge, gargantuan… it’s the greatest treasure trove in the history of our planet.
But without such a dense & economical energy source available… you don’t get an industrial revolution. Technological progress plateaus.
This is what I mean by a fundamental input—the energy store has to exist in the first place, in order to be harnessed by technology. The surplus is not being ‘created’, it is being ‘harvested’.
I think I’m derailing your topic somewhat, as we discuss more I think I understand more about your thought and I don’t think this ‘nuance’ of energy is very relevant within this framework.
Outside of it though, hugely important. The belief that we can ‘invent energy’ has fairly disastrous consequences for our civilization.
The physical fact of hydrocarbons sitting in the ground is exogenous, yes. But that was true since before humans existed, so it doesn’t explain progress. You need an explanation for why we didn’t start using those fuels on a large scale until the 1700s or so. And the proximal explanation for that is technology.
Why doesn’t your analysis account for energy at all?
Good question, probably because energy doesn’t seem pivotal for the specific case of the threshing machine? It was clearly a crucial piece of infrastructure in many other cases. I consider it part of the technology flywheel, along with other fundamental enabling technologies such as precision manufacturing. There’s a good argument that it is the most important of all such fundamental technologies.
So in your specific example of the threshing machine:
Surplus energy is required such that enough of the population are freed from subsistence and agriculture to specialize in other things.
Even more surplus energy is required for the creation/upkeep of cities, which are a prerequisite for technological innovation/growth (high density of different specialists living alongside eachother, as well as a labour force for factories/mass production).
And the railroads that enabled the widespread distribution of threshing machines—obviously highly energy intensive, and coincided with massive growth in coal use (steam engines originally invented for pumping water out of coal mines)
You seem to be labelling energy as a technology? If so, I think this is wrong. Energy is a fundamental input. Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
My position is that all technological growth is dependent on sufficient surplus energy. That certain levels of technological and social complexity have minimum surplus energy requirements.
So to answer the question in your title directly: because there wasn’t enough surplus energy available. This was the single most important bottleneck at every stage in our development. It remains the single most important bottleneck today.
Vaclav Smil is one of the better people to read on this subject. And if I remember correctly he has an interesting example about the plough (in Energy and Civilization) - an even more headscratching example of ‘why wasn’t this invented waaaay earlier?’
Your examples of energy usage enabling further economic growth are good ones, particularly the railroads, which absolutely depended on the ability to harness wood or coal for locomotion. But I disagree with how you interpret these examples and the rest of your analysis.
Re:
Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
I don’t know what it means for energy to be a “fundamental input.”
When you say:
I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
In short, surplus energy is not exogenous to technological or economic growth, it is endogenous.
>Well, first, there are such things as energy technologies. The steam engine is a technology. Processes to create coke from coal, or to refine crude oil, are technologies. These technologies are what make all of that energy accessible and usable.
To quote my post:
>Certainly technology is involved in capture/extraction/utilisation. But… hmm there’s a quote ‘Labour without energy is a corpse, capital (substitute technology here) without energy is a sculpture’.
And back to you (emphasis mine):
>I don’t think this does answer the question, because technological/industrial progress is what made that surplus energy available. It didn’t just become available for some other reason. The surplus was created by progress itself. So it can’t be used to explain progress.
I agree that technologies increased our access to surplus energy. I strongly disagree that they ‘created’ it.
Fossil fuels are exogenous to tech, right? They’re an energy store that was created long before homo sapiens turned up. And the quality/quantity of this energy store is huge, gargantuan… it’s the greatest treasure trove in the history of our planet.
But without such a dense & economical energy source available… you don’t get an industrial revolution. Technological progress plateaus.
This is what I mean by a fundamental input—the energy store has to exist in the first place, in order to be harnessed by technology. The surplus is not being ‘created’, it is being ‘harvested’.
I think I’m derailing your topic somewhat, as we discuss more I think I understand more about your thought and I don’t think this ‘nuance’ of energy is very relevant within this framework.
Outside of it though, hugely important. The belief that we can ‘invent energy’ has fairly disastrous consequences for our civilization.
The physical fact of hydrocarbons sitting in the ground is exogenous, yes. But that was true since before humans existed, so it doesn’t explain progress. You need an explanation for why we didn’t start using those fuels on a large scale until the 1700s or so. And the proximal explanation for that is technology.