The Diffusion of Innovations in Early Modern Europe

In recent years the study of the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ has become a very fashionable subject. Everett M. Rogers stressed the fact that his book on the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ was based on 506 diffusion studies published in the last decades. Of course quantity is not necessarily synonymous with quality and brilliant ideas are not a function of the number of titles printed. The first of the major conclusions reached by Rogers after perusing the 506 diffusion studies is that ‘innovativeness of individuals is related to a modern rather than a traditional orientation’. One may doubt whether such an extraordinary conclusion was worth the input of energy and goodwill that allegedly went into its production, but there is no doubt that innovations and their diffusion are a topic of major relevance in the study of social development. Innovations are to history what mutations are to biology. Actually, innovations show a remarkable tendency to cluster in time and space, and this incidentally suggests that attention should not be devoted exclusively to the eccentric individual genius of the innovators, but should also be extended to the anonymous forces of the environment.