Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge around the Renaissance, with the invention of the printing press.
The farther back we go, the more we have to use tongue-in-cheek definitions of "rapidly".
replies(4):
Basically he says one of the reasons China didn't experience the rapid growth Europe went through during the Renaissance was because Chinese society during those times had a strict hierarchy. You weren't allowed to rise through the ranks with your inventions or technologies, no matter how revolutionary they were. "No incentive, no change."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series...
If you look at what happened he could have benefited hugely if he was not obnoxious and had not gone out of his was to annoy people. He mocked the powerful, and he insisted that the Copernican cosmology (the sun is the centre of the universe) was not just a theory, but had been proven true.