Economic Progress as Related Sets of Non-Repeating Eclipses

I use a seemingly simple analogy of lunar and solar eclipses and set theoretical language to characterize how objects (factors) and ideas (forces) have determined the course of economic progress. In the early Ages economic progress depended heavily on objects, i.e., objects eclipsed ideas. From the end of Classical Antiquity to the present, objects, ideas, and their interactions and intra-actions have driven economic progress. The future of economic progress would depend principally on ideas, not because objects would vanish, but because object productivity would increasingly depend on ideas. While the welfare implications of the full idea eclipse of objects are difficult to pin down, they are not inconceivable. One obvious outcome is that different regions and countries will continue to perform differently because ideas will remain unevenly distributed, and even when they are evenly distributed, they will not be equally productive in all places. Such a policy implication recommends more investment in ideas than in objects in order to close the gaps in economic progress across regions and countries.