For the vast majority of history, argues John Constable, the supply of energy, from wheat and wind and water, was just too thin to generate complex structures on a sufficient scale to transform people’s lives. Along came the heat-to-work transition of 1700 and suddenly it became possible to create ever more improbable and complex material structures from the harnessing of fossil fuels with their huge energy yield on energy invested.
Innovation produces complex structures on a massive scale that transforms peoples lives.
