Math advanced a huge amount during the Medieval age. They simply didn't have good tools for calculations, and nearly all of the Modern Age's math was based on questions that they didn't even consider to ask by then.
There were huge advances on material handling during the Medieval and Modern ages. Not only the obvious ones on metallurgy, but on glass working and ceramics too. All of those were important.
And let's not underestimate the individuals. Had Newton not been born, our Industrial Revolution could be delayed for many decades too. Anyway, it's no accident that when he appeared, he was at England, there was basically no other place on the world where somebody like him could do what he did.
If you follow the development Industrial Revolution, you’ll see that it’s mostly thanks to ingenious engineers, not smart scientists. The scientists did occasionally deliver something valuable, often in fact paradigm-changing, but importantly, this only became very relevant around the turn of 20th century.
James Watt was only able to build efficient steam engines because Joseph Black discovered latent heat in 1761. Without steam engines, there’s no industrial revolution.
No, in fact both Black and Watt explicitly claimed that their research and results were independent.
I read about Oliver Heaviside and that helped shed some light on engineering improvements from that period of time. He was around a bit later in the 1800s, though.
Yes, those engineers were inventing most things by themselves, but they didn't work in a vacuum.
As advanced as Ancient Greek mathematics was, its heavy emphasis on geometric formulations made many developments more difficult. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system, algebra, invention of a zero number concept (Cardan's proof of the cubic and quartic would have gone significantly easier if he had utilized zero as a number) and Descartes's Analytic geometry were important developments on the way to calculus. By the time of Barrow's and Fermat's contributions, nearly all essential components of calculus existed, just requiring some genius to grab, synthesize and streamline them.
It absolutely is germane to this conversation and thanks for reminding me of it.
I think HN would enjoy it very much. It's an astonishing novel. Read it!
Is there a single technology, that if sent back in time, would have sustained their empire? (Steam engine? Hydropower improvements? Standardized measurements for tighter tolerances?)
What I think could have been a considerable factor that is rarely discussed is how "cosmopolitan" power structures appear in the late empire: someone makes an exceptional military career, gathers loyalty in the legions currently stationed in whatever corner of the empire he happens to serve, a few years later he's one of the contenders for emperor in the next civil war. But the economic development of the regions the "players" are associated with (if they even are associated with some specific region) doesn't seem to be a factor at all in that game.
A few centuries later feudalism and successors had military power (and with it political power) tied much closer to actual land and its economic power. This certainly did not directly lead to politics trying to foster industrial progress, but I can easily imagine how one form of stability (some hierarchy of lords stable for generations) could set up the prerequisites in a way the other form of stability (one seemingly eternal super-state but in an endless state of internal strife as the only form of meaningful achievement) would not.
There's a whole lot of research to show that the cost of labour in Britain in the 18th century was far higher than that of continental Europe - several times higher. And that this high cost of labour is what spurred on innovation.
I found this a fascinating read. Below that section is a list of technological developments.
"natural resources such as [...] waterfalls"?
Is this a typo? Or is it talking about small waterfalls for hydro power?
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Which of those six factors was the roman empire lacking? I feel like they could have had all six, but I don't know much about roman history.
The ancient Greeks had a steam engine. There were no mass printed books so barely anyone knew about it. Even if you knew you couldn’t exactly start a company.