This volume explains how changing technology and economizing behavior induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, labor utilization, and patterns of living. Basing his work on a new and original synthesis of classical economics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution, Richard Day asserts that economic growth, viewed from a long-term perspective, must be characterized as an explosive process, interpreted by turbulent transitions in social and political life as societies adapt to new life styles and opportunities and to the vast increase and redistribution of human populations.