CONCEPT
Efflorescence
Goldstone's term — borrowed from botany — for the sudden, intense flowering of creative and economic energy that appears rapidly in a society and carries no guarantee of permanence.
Efflorescence is the analytical frame Jack Goldstone introduced in his 2002 Journal of World History article to describe what had been miscategorized in economic history. Scholars had been asking why sustained modern growth began in Northwestern Europe. Goldstone's reframing was sharper and more disturbing: why did it happen only once, when many societies had experienced bursts of dynamism of comparable intensity? The concept borrows from botany the image of a plant suddenly producing flowers — rapid, dazzling, and temporary. An efflorescence is a society-scale burst of creative and economic energy that lifts output, capability, and creativity above the prevailing baseline. Song Dynasty China, Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Amsterdam, Abbasid Baghdad, Enlightenment Edinburgh — each was an efflorescence. Almost none sustained.
