On the Social Evolution of Knowledge

The idea of economic and social progress which emerged in the seventeenth century had as its basis the cumulative growth of knowledge. This included not just codified scientific knowledge but also knowledge which was produced and reproduced in the course of the ordinary business of life and embodied in individual humans, in artefacts and in practices. Although the independent role of knowledge in economic growth always had some recognition, in the period between the late eighteenth and twentieth centuries, it was largely subsumed within the accumulation of capital. While this did reflect the substantial embodiment of knowledge in capital equipment, it also meant that wider considerations of the social and cumulative role of knowledge in productive activity became a minority and heterodox pursuit. The paper seeks to recover the longer historical pedigree of this wider understanding of knowledge including some of its specific characteristics such as its non-rival nature, its incomplete excludability, its tacitness and the uncertainties surrounding innovation.