The necessary developments in math and physics are not to be underestimated. I'm not disputing whether you could eventually do it without coal, I'm attacking the supposition that medieval-to-earlier civilizations (the Song Dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Roman Empire, etc) could have industrialized if they had only realized one or two key things. There's a whole framework of understanding that had to be established: calculus, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, et cetera; the Europeans had the benefit of importing knowledge from all over Eurasia, from paper (China, imported via Middle East ca. 1200s) to positional numerals (India), to algebra (al-Khwarizmi, born near Uzbekistan, worked in Baghdad). Leonardo Bonacci's schooling in Algeria was transformative for Italian mathematics. Et cetera.
A single wind turbine will only pump water at a measly rate up a large incline. In order to gather enough wind turbines' output to achieve useful energy storage, you need a means of transmission; the electric dynamo dates to 1831, while the electrostatic generator was developed around 1663, but could not operate while transmitting power. Pneumatics require, again, high precision. This stuff only seems easy now because we have so much understanding of the physical world that was unimaginable when Constantinople and Tenochtitlan were conquered. A modern train car can be pushed by hand; a sailing train car with the steel and lubricants available to da Vinci or Ben Sheng would hardly budge without a gale. Coal is so, so easy by comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing#Appar...
The necessary developments in math and physics are not to be underestimated. I'm not disputing whether you could eventually do it without coal, I'm attacking the supposition that medieval-to-earlier civilizations (the Song Dynasty, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Roman Empire, etc) could have industrialized if they had only realized one or two key things. There's a whole framework of understanding that had to be established: calculus, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, et cetera; the Europeans had the benefit of importing knowledge from all over Eurasia, from paper (China, imported via Middle East ca. 1200s) to positional numerals (India), to algebra (al-Khwarizmi, born near Uzbekistan, worked in Baghdad). Leonardo Bonacci's schooling in Algeria was transformative for Italian mathematics. Et cetera.
A single wind turbine will only pump water at a measly rate up a large incline. In order to gather enough wind turbines' output to achieve useful energy storage, you need a means of transmission; the electric dynamo dates to 1831, while the electrostatic generator was developed around 1663, but could not operate while transmitting power. Pneumatics require, again, high precision. This stuff only seems easy now because we have so much understanding of the physical world that was unimaginable when Constantinople and Tenochtitlan were conquered. A modern train car can be pushed by hand; a sailing train car with the steel and lubricants available to da Vinci or Ben Sheng would hardly budge without a gale. Coal is so, so easy by comparison.