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I think thats too simplistic. The romans didnt have modern metal working to build effective steam engines or coal to power them. They didn't even have printing
by Houshalter 11y ago
I think thats too simplistic. The romans didnt have modern metal working to build effective steam engines or coal to power them. They didn't even have printing presses to preserve and spread knowledge. Or good number systsem to do math with.
Maybe they could have had an industrial revolution but its not as simple as just slaves.
- lordnacho 11y agoI think there's some value in the parent comment. Of course labor is not the only input. But the laws of nature haven't changed; the Romans could have discovered science back then if they'd only set up society to do so.
- Houshalter 11y agoWe don't know that. That's hindsight bias. There are so many things that happened before the industrial revolution that contributed. I mentioned the printing press and modern mathematics. The creation of a totally different economic system than the Romans had. I also read once about the development of the canon lead to experimenting with better and better metal working. Which eventually allowed steam engines. The Romans had no concept of the scientific method. No concept of machines that could do work or produce energy. The whole philosophy that the universe obeyed simple laws that could be discovered empirically was foreign to them. The Greeks believed that they could discover the laws of the universe just by thinking really hard about them. An interesting take on this is Archimede's Chronophone: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5/archimedess_chronophone/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/h5/archimedess_chronophone/