The Origin of Wealth

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I write this, the field of economics is going through its most profound change in over a hundred years. I believe that this change represents a major shift in the intellectual currents of the world that will have a substantial impact on our lives and the lives of generations to come. I also believe that just as biology became a true science in the twentieth century, so too will economics come into its own as a science in the twenty-first century. The great historian and philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, observed that scientific inquiry does not advance through steady, even progress. Rather, as one scholar of Kuhn’s work described it, science moves forward through “a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by ...