[legitster]

I'm largely thinking about why the Industrial Revolution couldn't be cooked up during, like, the Roman period despite there being many places with a similar set of ingredients.

My point isn't that England was first or best at these things, but the chronology of these things coming first was essential for the puzzle pieces coming together.

[eesmith]

You're walking very close to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

English is an unusual European language using "did" to express some negatives, like "I didn't want it" instead of "I want it not", and with a relatively insignificant gender system in the grammar.

Maybe that was part of the puzzle.

Or perhaps Anglicanism was part of the puzzle.

Or the wealth from colonial exploitation and slavery that was used to fund these projects.

For that matter, when Watt developed his steam engine, Scottish "colliers and salters [were] in a state of slavery and bondage" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Slavery_and... , so there's another puzzle piece. That surely seems like part of the legal entitlements you refer to, albeit in Scotland instead of England.

Or, as English people 150 years ago argued, the natural superiority of the Anglo-Saxon and Scottish races -- a puzzle piece that biology has conclusively shown does not exist.

How do you know which puzzle piece is relevant enough to the puzzle, vs. a happenstance?