The printing press was certainly an accelerant but itself was a culmination of centuries of progress in Europe not shared elsewhere. Other alphabets and alpha-s

The printing press was certainly an accelerant but itself was a culmination of centuries of progress in Europe not shared elsewhere. Other alphabets and alpha-syllabaries in Eastern Europe, India and the Islamic world didn't lead to printing because they lacked the maturing technology and tradition of movable type that Europe had in the centuries before Gutenberg (cf. Medieval letter tiles, Prufening dedicatory inscription, etc.). Even in Gutenberg's time there were other goldsmiths making nearly identical advances in Holland and France. More importantly, two centuries before Gutenberg, scholars in Western Europe had thrown off the shackles of believing antiquity had all the answers, something many parts of the world still struggle with. This is sometimes credited to the rediscovery of Aristotle but the Persians and Arabs knew Aristotle and never made that leap. Instead Aristotle is simply another accelerant. What actually led Europe (and specifically Western Europe) to science was the development, from Catholic cathedral schools to pseudo-independent, credential granting institutions of learning which encouraged adding to previous knowledge and, because of this, specialization. Six hundred years before Gutenberg these proto-universities had already formalized specialized programs with separate credentials for studies in theology, philosophy and medicine. Previous academies that investigated the natural world were simply not resilient institutions; tending to decline under weak central rulers (Gondeshapur in Iran, Baghdad's House of Wisdom), be obliterated in war (House of Wisdom again, Plato's Academy) or fade after the passing of famous founders. Many also lacked a professional faculty and credential granting, further limiting long term innovation. Western Europe's fractured political map and separation of religious power in the papacy worked against these tendencies. The independence and progress of local universities was always to the benefit of local rulers and at the same time the universities enjoyed an association with the church that helped protect them from both obliteration after military conquest and excessive domination by the state. This independence has to be one of the biggest keys because China's Imperial Academy had both amazing resilience and degree granting so it's inability to develop any kind of formal science has to be blamed on the strong subjugation to the central government which used it strictly to train civil servants. The most learned men of China were interested in the natural world, they engaged in scientism (cf. Shen Kuo's proto-geomorphism 800 years before Lyell) but they were essentially all self-taught hobbyists.