I’m not claiming this view to be particularly well informed, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis that the industrial revolution required the development, dispersement and application of new methods of applied mathematics. For this to happen there needed to be an easy-to-use number system with a zero and a decimal point. Use of calculus would seem to be an almost essential mathematical aid as well. Last but not least there needed to be a sizeable collaborative, communicative and practically minded scientific community who could discuss, criticise and disseminate applied mathematical ideas and apply them in physical experiments. All these three items were extant in Britain in the late 17th century, the latter being exemplified by the Royal Society. These, combined with the geologically bestowed gifts of coal and iron ore, would set Britain up to be in the best position to initiate the Industrial Revolution.
Now, can a proper historian of science critique this and show how this view is incorrect?
While I agree that their counting system was not super useful for a lot of complicated mathematical or theoretical stuff, what you get instead is a lot of architecture, engineering, etc. that has familiar ideas in different terms. What you see if you look into the technology Vitrivius described is that they had a lot of “industrial” things (cranes, siege engines, etc.) but these were all constructed/powered using slaves.
You can also see that the Romans were aware of primitive steam technology. My personal understanding for why they didn’t develop it further was that they had no ideological or financial reason to stop using slaves for all brute mechanical tasks, and since slaves were so disenfranchised, there was no reason to find ways of replacing them.
I’m not claiming this view to be particularly well informed, but it seems a reasonable hypothesis that the industrial revolution required the development, dispersement and application of new methods of applied mathematics. For this to happen there needed to be an easy-to-use number system with a zero and a decimal point. Use of calculus would seem to be an almost essential mathematical aid as well. Last but not least there needed to be a sizeable collaborative, communicative and practically minded scientific community who could discuss, criticise and disseminate applied mathematical ideas and apply them in physical experiments. All these three items were extant in Britain in the late 17th century, the latter being exemplified by the Royal Society. These, combined with the geologically bestowed gifts of coal and iron ore, would set Britain up to be in the best position to initiate the Industrial Revolution.
Now, can a proper historian of science critique this and show how this view is incorrect?
I’m including this wikipedia article because it’s actually a pretty good summary of the text/writer in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius.
While I agree that their counting system was not super useful for a lot of complicated mathematical or theoretical stuff, what you get instead is a lot of architecture, engineering, etc. that has familiar ideas in different terms. What you see if you look into the technology Vitrivius described is that they had a lot of “industrial” things (cranes, siege engines, etc.) but these were all constructed/powered using slaves.
You can also see that the Romans were aware of primitive steam technology. My personal understanding for why they didn’t develop it further was that they had no ideological or financial reason to stop using slaves for all brute mechanical tasks, and since slaves were so disenfranchised, there was no reason to find ways of replacing them.