We talking antiquity, medieval, age of sail, or early modern? Because all of those have vastly different progress, for example the medieval period saw vast leaps in metallurgy and chemistry while antiquity was had a shit tonne of early mechanical engineering going on.
The point is that all of that pales to the pace of technological progress during and after the industrial revolution, which casts doubts on the uniqueness or efficacy of the narrative of ‘industrialists are strangling technological progress’.
We talking antiquity, medieval, age of sail, or early modern? Because all of those have vastly different progress, for example the medieval period saw vast leaps in metallurgy and chemistry while antiquity was had a shit tonne of early mechanical engineering going on.
The point is that all of that pales to the pace of technological progress during and after the industrial revolution, which casts doubts on the uniqueness or efficacy of the narrative of ‘industrialists are strangling technological progress’.