Lack of technological progress in late Roman Empire

[conon394]

You misunderstood what I meant. I'm talking about pace - by that I mean cumulative technological progress as took place during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century which almost happened in 2nd century Rome (AD). I didn't mean pace as in the rapid adoption of a new invention.

What you're saying, I believe, doesn't conflict with nor negate what I'm saying. I acknowledge that technological progress wasn't 100% arrested during Roman times. In fact, as I just said, they were on the cusp of igniting the Industrial Revolution a full 1,600 years before it finally happened. But since they failed to do so, they left the world to slog at a snails pace towards full mechanization.

Misunderstand perhaps, but I still disagree. No matter what I think of the Roman’s proclivity for advancing technology, I would argue that the ideal of a 18th/19th style European industrial revolution in the 2nd Century in the Roman Empire was not near miss but fundimaental impossibility.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century was critically made possible by two things the Romans lacked: 1700 years (or so) of incremental progress in every field of human endeavor; and the fact that there were a lot more people around and thus a lot more potential for someone to be in the right place at the right time with an invention of insight. In addition, tangentially east-west contacts were only just becoming firm, and importantly sea-based links were relatively new. Rome thus lacked fairly easy access to Chinese/Eastern innovations. Rome also lacked the additional admixture of ‘technologies’ from the Americas.

It seems altogether unfair to argue that ipso facto the failure of Rome to produce the 19th century industrial revolution means Rome was anti technology. Or rather if that is your criteria than every culture and society except 19th century Europe (and the US, Canada etc) is equally technologically stagnate and culpable.

It seems that your evidence is limited to one or two industries - glass and iron tubes. That's enough to conclude that technological progress didn't go through a period of deceleration ?

Deceleration how (staying with the glass example)? Glass had been kicking around since Dynastic Egypt for hundreds of years, and the world got was what, beads and a few bowls – luxury items at that. Give the Romans a century and they make blown glass a common every day thing mass produced commodity, put in place continent spanning trade networks for handling primary glass production and shipping, invented glazed windows and make them a typical and regular part of there architecture, developed glass lamps that were around 2 times more efficient than ceramic ones, where is the slow down? I would say that rather than a deceleration, and given the relative small size of their inherited technological ‘tool-kit’ (vs. say the 18th/19th ‘West’) the Romans actually accelerated technological innovation and dissemination.

If they failed anywhere is was in the Empire's relative political weakness and it failure to maintain it's stability that subsequently allowed the disruption of the vast single market space the Romans created up to the 2nd century AD.