Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2020-21/ Xin, KZ and Ryan

My idea:

Economists' and historians' different approaches to and disagreements on the cause of the first Industrial Revolution (why it happened in Britain first, and why it happened in the 18th century). We can narrow it down to the cause of the invention of the first spinning machine.

Economists emphasised on the importance of the relative high wages of the workers in Britain (as a result of British imperialism and commercial success) at that time, which gave the "entrepreneurs" incentives to move away from labour-intensive production methods and invent advanced tools (such as the spinning machine). They also focused on the relative lower prices of coal in Britain (because there were abundant coal in Britain).

Historians paid more attention to the influence of the Science Revolution and Enlightenment which gave the artisans access to practical science knowledge and tools to build machines. They also attributed the Industrial Revolution to the cultural and political features in Britain as the political institutions and culture encouraged innovation, or at least not stifled innovation as much as that of some countries did. (In addition, some historians argued that British people, who were protestants were more hard-working.)

These are the general opinions among them. I learned the disagreements in my Economics module.

If we are going to write on this topic, we'll probably need to move our chapter to the history sector as we are talking about the historical causes of a historical event.

Please feel free to comment on my idea and propose your ideas!

How about having a group meeting on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday to decide on our topic and make a plan and timetable?