• alyaza [they/she]M
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    32 years ago

    All of which is why simple graphs of things like ‘global historical GDP’ can be a bit deceptive: there’s a lot of particularity beneath the basic statistics of production because technologies are contingent and path dependent. Now all of that said I want to reiterate that the industrial revolution only happened once in one place so may well could have happened somewhere else in a different way with different preconditions; we’ll never really know because our one industrial revolution spread over the whole globe before any other industrial revolutions happened. But we can still note that the required precursors for the one sample we have didn’t exist in the Roman economy.

    this is a particularly interesting point to consider–what other ways might an industrial revolution (or series of them) happen besides the way in which ours did? i’m sure someone out there has written alternate history to this effect, since there’s alt history for almost everything you can think of.

  • @lisko@sopuli.xyz
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    12 years ago

    That’s kind of a ridiculous question… the industrial revolution took place like a thousand years later

    • alyaza [they/she]M
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      42 years ago

      i would encourage you to actually engage with the article, which is actually quite interesting, instead of flippantly dismissing it in a way that leaves no avenue for discussion at all.

      • @lisko@sopuli.xyz
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        12 years ago

        I am not dismissing the article, but the question in the title is not well conceived. I provided strong reasoning for that as well. Why call it flippant?

        • @altair222@beehaw.org
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          42 years ago

          Sometimes the article content justifies the question. Also industrial revolution that we did end up having, philosophically, and scientifically, is not the only way, manner, and fashion in which it can occur.