Science, Technology and Innovation in the History of Economic Thought

This book provides an overview of the importance of science, technology, and innovation in the history of economic thought. It charts how science has responded to societal needs and global challenges to highlight the way in which knowledge and technology have been used to benefit society. Particular attention is given to modern concerns, such as climate change, technological unemployment, and social unrest, which are contextualised within the work of the Scottish Enlightenment, Marx, Weber, and Schumpeter. Broader debates, including the relationship between invention and economic development, the alienation of labour, and institutional change, are also considered.

This book aims to shed new light on our understanding of science, technology, and innovation by placing them within ideas from the history of economic thought. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the history of economic thought and the economics of innovation and technology.

1. Invention, institutional change and economic development: from Scottish Enlightenment to the IPE.- 2. Friedrich List, contemporaries and followers: national innovation policies revisited.- 3. Transhumanism as alienation in Marx's humanist approach.- 4. Energy efficiency, productivity and the Jevons paradox.- 5. Max Weber: Science, Technology and Knowledge.- 6. Schumpeter and Austrian economics on innovation.- 7. The Neoclassical approach, its crisis and the Schumpeterian echo in the current paradigm of the economic analysis of Technological Change.- 8. Some misconceptions regarding innovation (and how reading the classics might help to overcome them).- 9. Sustainability and technological progress.- 10. Technological unemployment as a historical debate.- 11. On the controversies on capital as a selection between paradigms.- 12. Influence of Schumpeter in the national context.- 13. Institutional problems for innovation although inventions are available.- 14. Conclusion and future research.

Estrella Trincado Aznar is Professor of History of Economic Thought at the Complutense University of Madrid. 

Fernando López Castellano is Professor of Economics at the University of Granada.