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Following this reasoning, why didn't the enlightenment occur in asia, which had earlier access to gunpowder? Iirc the ottoman empire had portable guns before th
by belgian_guy 5y ago
Following this reasoning, why didn't the enlightenment occur in asia, which had earlier access to gunpowder? Iirc the ottoman empire had portable guns before the west. And china had fire lances way before that.
- donw 5y agoBecause the Enlightenment was a complex social phenomenon with multiple prerequisites...?
- ben_w 5y ago“Gun” isn’t one single tech; you start with a canon that’s hard to move, dangerous to the user, and with a smooth barrel and ball that doesn’t have good accuracy. Industry to make gunpowder cheaply and reliably rather than as one-offs for anti-castle siege weapons, and metallurgy and tooling to make the weapons hand-held and not prone to exploding in the operator’s hand, are what I have to assume old Asia lacked.