Age of Discovery

Da Vinci, Galileo, Copernicus, Raphael, Michelangelo. These names recall an era in which an unprecedented rush of discovery broke through long-standing barriers of ignorance and connected the whole world, politically and economically, for the first time. We still think of such surges of human ingenuity as rare. But they don't have to be. Today, for instance, our resources are better, our education is more advanced, and the pace of breakthrough innovation is doubling every two years. The same forces that converged then to spark genius and upend social order - great leaps in science, trade, migration and technology - are present again in our lifetime, with potentially even greater results. In Age of Discovery, Oxford Professor Ian Goldin and Oxford Martin Fellow Chris Kutarna show how we can achieve our own golden age, given the will. But many of the factors that undid the first Renaissance are rising once again: warring ideologies, fundamentalism, climate change, pandemics. Can we weather the crises and seize the moment to leave the world a legacy it will still celebrate, 500 years later?