One of the questions is what caused the Great Divergence, where Western Civilization greatly surpassed other societies, which previously had been comparable or even ahead of Europe, both economically and technologically.
A distinctive feature of Western Civilization since the Middle Ages has been its continous technological advancement. This has been unique in history, other civilizations have burst of technical innovation lasting for a few centuries followed by periods of relative stagnation, where innovation and advancement greatly slows down. You see this in the ancient classical world, where after a burst of innovation during Classical Greece and Hellenistic period, you much less technological advancement during Roman times, more a refining and improving of existing technology rather than creating brand new technology. You see this also in China, which after the burst of innovation in the Song dynasty you see relative technological stagnation during the Ming and Qing dynasty. Yet that same technological stagnation did not happen in Europe starting from medieval times onward. If anything, innovation increased over time, not diminished. This fact is what I believe is the root cause of the Great Divergence, and understanding why Europe did not follow the usual pattern of technical innovation diminishing overtime and is the key to understanding the Great Divergence.
After all, if you keep technologically advancing while your peers don't, there will come a point in time where you willi have so much of a technological edge you will overwhelm your peers. Like a tortoise passing the hare, you can come from behind and still wind up the winner. The question is why didn't Europe wind up in the typical pattern of technological stagnation following innovation. Take for example the stern rudder. The Chinese invented a stern rudder centuries before the Europeans, but then stopped- they did not make major changes to it. After the European's invented their stern rudder, they found as their ships got bigger a problem that you also see on the Chinese ships, namely that big ships require big rudders which require a lot of effort and men to operate. So the Europeans came up with a solution, the whipstaff, which gave mechanical advantage to operate the rudder tiller, in the 16th and 17th century, so one helmsman could operate the rudder. But the whipstaff had drawbacks, a big one being you were limited on how far you could turn the rudder. So in the beginning of the 18th century Europeans came up with a better solution, the steering wheel. Without the steering wheel the large ships of modern times. For the 800 ton 19th century Chinese sailing ship the Keying, it took up to 15 men to handle the tiller rudder.and the captain said it would have taken 30 men without block and tackle ("A Description of the Chinese Junk Keying", Fourth Edition. London 1848. A 51 page pamplet sold onboard) A larger ship woukd take even more men to operate the rudder While Chinese innovation stopped Euorpean innovation on the rudder continued for centuries
Nor was it just the Chinese who displayed this lack of innovation overtime. The Roman made some improvements to the ballista invemted hundreds of years earlier, making them bigger and switching to metal frames, but they never made major changes or advanced to more powerful siege engines like the counterweight trebuchet. Europeans advanced from the medieval trebuchets to black powder smoothbore cannons to rifled barrel guns firing explosive shells in the same amount of time. Both the Romans and Chinese might have felt their inventions were good enough but there is always room for improvement.
One thing I noticed in Western Civilization is an appreciation of newness for its own sake - the new, latest clothing styles that are different from what went before is actively sought, not merely tolerated. An annual Paris type fashion show where the latest new fashions are displayed and sought would be inconceivable in pre modern China, it would be a total dud. But I could conceive such a fashion trend working in high medieval Europe - nobles there appreciated new trends in fashion and tried to be up-to-date with the latest court fashion.
You see it in art as well - new styles of art are praised and western artists seek out new methods, new styles, new mediums. Pre Modern Chinese artist sought to replicate the works of earlier times rather than deliberstely seeking out new styles and new modes. I think this desire and seeking out the new spilled over into technical innovation in Europe in a way it did not in China.
New, simply for the sake of being new, was not as appreciated in other civilizations as in Europan civilization. Even in what is traditionally a conseravitive area, you often find the expression of the "new" in Europe. Gothic cathedrals were radical innovation in their day, pushing advances in both engineering and art. Likewise, when Wren rebuilt St. Paul's cathedral, he did not use the well establish gothic design, but the newer, more radical designs of his day, and faced new engineering challenges. Compare that to the pagodas of the Ming dynasty which look like those of the Tang, or the Blue Mosque in Instanbul, which looks like the Hagiaii Sophia built a 1000 years earlier. I am not saying what is new is not appreciated in other cultures, it just was not as highly esteemed in premodern times outside of the West.