This blog fundamentally misunderstands the Industrial Revolution. It focuses on specific technological advancements like the steam engine as pre-requisites. The

This blog fundamentally misunderstands the Industrial Revolution. It focuses on specific technological advancements like the steam engine as pre-requisites. The truth is that the discovery of the steam engine was inevitable. The conditions that made it possible were not. The Magna Carta, which laid the time for a democratic society, was a key precursor. Democratic societies enable the free exchange of ideas far better than other forms of government. The printing press, often considered the most important invention ever, allowed the exchange and preservation of ideas at a scale never before possible or imagined in history. Both of these led to the Scientific Revolution in England. The formalization of the scientific method, the discovery of the fundamental laws of nature- it was the Scientific Revolution which made the Industrial Revolution inevitable.