universality and repeatability. And its inherent social, historical, mankind’s and cultural meanings have potential dangers of being destructed. With the coming of industrial revolution, vigorous practice activities of industrial technology transform this possibility into reality. With the proceeding of modernity movement, rationality degenerates into a suppressing force and dominating method g...

on an earlier version are acknowledged with gratitude. 1 North (1981, p. 166) comes close to linking the institutional changes of the late eighteenth century with the Industrial 1 Revolution when he maintains that it was explained by " a combination of better-specified and enforced property rights and increasingly efficient and expanding markets. " North and Weingast (1989, p. 831) are more pru...

Many view the period after the Second Industrial Revolution as a paradigm of a transition to a new economy following a technological revolution, including the Information Technology Revolution. We build a quantitative model of diffusion and growth during transitions to evaluate that view. With a learning process quantified by data on the life cycle of US manufacturing plants, the model accounts...