4 ms·

How about in warfare - weren’t weapons ‘improving’ through the centuries?

• jacquesm 6y ago
  About as fast as materials science. That was the limiting factor.
• notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Yes but the weapons "improving" didn't translate directly into armies winning, and it still doesn't today. The US is right now retreating from Afghanistan, where it spent 20 years losing to a much smaller, much less-funded, much lower-tech militia (the Taliban). So again, the idea of "progress" as a totality is very new (and you could argue, still wrong, it isn't absolutely clear that we are progressing as a species or even as a society).