> But why did China discard movable type, while it was transformative to Western culture?

A simpler explanation: That Chinese characters number in the 10,000s, while the characters in the Western alphabet number 26. This means that the latter is much easier than to former to turn into a profitable business, because the early movable types themselves are costly in time and capital to make, and easy to break or so I'd imagine. With 10,000 replicas of 26 characters you can print 24/7. However, with 26 replicas of 10,000 characters, your business will be halted every type the movable type of characters you need are inevitably broken and wait for an artisan to make new ones.

Cursory google shows that you need about 2500 characters, of a total of approximately 50,000 in the Cantonese branch alone. I don't know how many characters Gutenberg was working with, but having experienced modern German, English, French, and Spanish writing - I'm sure it wasn't 2500. Alongside the formatting. I suspect that is why it faltered.

I think your postulations on the Greeks are interesting. I do have to wonder at the level of accessibility of the Greek thinkers into the Middle Ages and into the Enlightenment - from my understanding Archimedes, for example, a very late Greek thinker, was only rediscovered as a product of translations from the Arabic world - a product I suspect of the Church, which was itself an institution of incomparable power since before the fall of Rome. If this is correct that's a thousand-year period without the Classical thinkers, and yet Europe was still, in my opinion (and many others), highly functional.

I believe Toynbee came up with the Goldilocks hypothesis for civilization; not too challenging, but not too easy. If you'll allow me, I would posit this exists at the intersection and overlap of cultures as well. My history is fast and loose, you'll have to forgive me: but the Axial age coincides with lots of warring in just about every major old-world society - thus "we" derived challenge - readily modulated by various developments, resource limitations, and etc... It's my impression that "Europe" was particularly violent, thus a constancy of the "challenge" was thematic of the West. I see this as something that created a persistent arms race which escalated with the passage of time. I would suggest this has little to do with empiricism and more to do with the necessity of maintaining the balance of power - right up to MAD.

Finally, with the Age of Discovery, and the discovery of the New World with it, a vast and untapped land which was available with little contest thanks to contagious disease, virgin soil, and a people who may have even been susceptible beyond that... The tradition was allowed continuity, and all of the philosophy active in that era was allowed to persist uncontested a la your reward system, which may have actually been copped from the Arabic market traditions albeit in a seriously perverted fashion.

The West "explored" but also in a fairly aggressive way and only after a history of violent conflict post-Rome. I read Metropolis by Ben Wilson, which focused on histories of cities, and the Middle East was experience a trade-driven era of prosperity before being "discovered" by religious explorers/conquerors from Portugal. The Portuguese didn't initially have much valuable to those societies to trade - but they did have much better weapons to use against them from that history of conflict instead of a history of trade, and an aggressive religious mindset.

I think it's a very open question if the warring, violent nature of those Western cultures actually led to overall faster/better technological advancement than if they'd interacted with the other cultures they came across in a peaceful, trade-oriented way.

The west was not a more violent culture than others. There was as much war everywhere. And the idea that Middle-East people were peaceful trader and European aggressive warriors is not bases on reality : Just one example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade

I'd actually be interested to see you quantify that, but I'm reviewing the timelines of Wars on Wikipedia at the moment, and from what I'm seeing, the "West", kind of a nebulous term - depending on where you draw the lines, was culprit to more wars. I'm a little lazy so I'm just keeping mental account.

I expect you're speaking in terms of qualitative violence?

You are reading a list that is eurocentric. Anyone with an interest in non-European history knows how sparse Wikipedia can be for their subject.

A great example is the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. According to your list only a single war took place for nearly 80 years in china, until the Song dynasty, which formed and unified (most of) china without a single war, attacks Vietnan, whereas in China it's known as a period of endemic warfare until the Song reunified china through conquest. Compare that to a Viking raid on Lisbon that does get its own place on the list.

And, as stated elsewhere, a middle class that could consume it.