The Fighting Temeraire. 1839, by Joseph Mallord William Turner. (Source: Wikimedia)

Editor's note: Post 2/30 for Inkhaven

Why did the philosophers fail to anticipate the industrial revolution? I often find myself wondering. On the one hand, you could argue that they weren’t in the business of predicting the future. But on the other hand, I’m sure if you plucked Plato and his students from The Academy and dropped them off in 1910, they’d probably have a few things to say about it. The most transformative event of the past ten thousand years is surely interesting to curious observers of the human condition. But then again maybe it's not so surprising. Predicting the future is hard. Predicting an exponential at the start of said exponential is even harder.

So did anyone do it? And if so, who was the earliest? Could anyone possibly predict industrialization in antiquity? The middle ages? The age of the printing press? When did the first mind dare to pull back the veil of agriculturalism and sneak a glimpse at the dazzling, terrifying spectacle of the industrial age? We’ll never know for sure of course. But I present two candidates:

Christiaan Huygens

An illustration of Huygens’ gunpowder engine [...]

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Outline:

(01:28) Christiaan Huygens

(05:07) Roger Bacon

(08:33) Are there other Candidates?

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 3rd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Djcwo4GTfLTEDuvx4/did-anyone-predict-the-industrial-revolution

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