Steven Johnson makes a connection between the coffee house
culture and the Age of Reason: His point is that in the 17th and
18th centuries England changed from a culture that was drunk
during the daytime to one that was caffeinated. That’s an
interesting point that I’m going to have to add to my lectures
about how economic growth began before the industrial
revolution. I have two additions. First, I think there’s an
issue of economic serendipity here. People drank all day at that
time because the water wasn’t safe to drink. They didn’t
understand the mechanism, but there were clear medicinal reasons
for a lot of beer and wine (remember that spirits were in their
infancy at this point). Yet, people had the technology to boil
their water. The thing is, they didn’t recognize the advantages
of this. There’s an unusual research project there for a Ph.D.
student: why exactly wasn’t this discovered. Because what’s
interesting is that they did learn to boil water to make a mild
drug: coffee or tea. So it clearly took