It is profoundly satisfying to see that the philosophy I have long championed—#creativedestruction—has been honoured with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
#PhilippeAghion, #PeterHowitt, and Joel Mokyr were recognised “for explaining innovation-driven economic growth.”
I have always argued that the greatness of a civilisation lies not in wealth or conquest, but in its ability to renew itself.
Progress demands the courage to dismantle what no longer works and the curiosity to imagine what might.
When Aghion and Howitt modelled creative destruction in 1992, they gave mathematics to a timeless truth:
When the new is born, the old must yield.
Every breakthrough—from the steam engine to the semiconductor—creates opportunity by burying obsolescence.
This is not destruction for its own sake; it is constructive destruction, the pulse of progress.
When Nokia fell, Apple rose.
When the .com bubble burst, it fertilised Google and Amazon.
When Intel waned, Nvidia’s architecture redefined computing.
Each collapse births a greater ascent.
The Civilisation of Curiosity
#JoelMokyr reminds us, the Industrial Revolution was not an accident.
Between 1500 and 1800, Western Europe—especially Britain, the Netherlands, Northern Italy, and France—did something no empire had done:
It made curiosity an institution.
The Republic of Letters was an open network where Galileo wrote to Kepler, Boyle to Huygens, and Newton to Leibniz.
Ideas moved faster than armies.
Truth escaped the throne and the altar; evidence replaced edict.
“The Republic of Letters institutionalised curiosity — it made the pursuit of knowledge a public, rewarded activity.”
Joel Mokyr
Europe married mind and machine: theoretical curiosity met practical innovation. Patents, academies, and societies like the Royal Society (1660) turned wonder into infrastructure.
Innovation became habitual, not heretical.
The Empires That Froze Curiosity
While Europe opened laboratories, the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires closed their minds.
These gunpowder states mastered conquest but distrusted inquiry.
Printing was banned, astronomy censored, dissent punished. They built palaces instead of universities and recited lineage while Europe built telescopes.
They preserved authority but forfeited progress.
The same centuries that gave Europe Newton and Watt left Istanbul and Isfahan peering through a theological haze.
Curiosity as Civilisation’s Compass
Every Nobel Prize is a monument to curiosity.
Civilisations thrive on the same principle: they grow when they question, decline when they worship.
The West progressed not by #industrialplunder, as Shashi Tharoor naively laments, nor by the medieval mindset that Taliban-like populists glorify today—it advanced because it rewarded curiosity and codified renewal.
The next leap—the fusion of human and artificial intelligence—will follow the same law:
Those who institutionalise curiosity will define the future; those who promote violence vanish into history.
The most powerful empire ever built wasn’t military—it was intellectual. Its capital was curiosity.
When you have zero curiosity you are bound to fail. Stop TikTok following ideas that are changing the world. 10-second attention spans will destroy creativity and innovation. Destroy your old self to build a new one.
#Curiosity #JoelMokyr #CreativeDestruction #NobelPrize #Mughals #Ottomans #Safavids #Aghion #Howitt