Toward universal laws of technology evolution: modeling multi-century advances in mobile direct-fire systems

Abstract

This paper explores the question of whether a single regularity of technological growth might apply to a broad range of technologies, over a period of multiple centuries. To this end, the paper investigates a collection of diverse weapon systems called here the mobile direct-fire systems. These include widely different families of technologies that span the period of 1300–2015 CE: foot soldiers armed with weapons from bows to assault rifles; horse-mounted soldiers with a variety of weapons; foot artillery and horse artillery; towed antitank guns; self-propelled antitank and assault guns; and tanks.The main contribution of this paper is that, indeed, a single, parsimonious regularity describes the historical growth of this extremely broad collection of systems. Multiple, widely different families of weapon systems—from a bowman to a tank—fall closely on the same curve, a simple function of time. This suggests a general model that unites allometric relations (such as Kleiber’s Law) and exponential growth relations (such as Moore’s Law).To this author’s knowledge, no prior research describes a regularity in the temporal growth of technology that covers such widely different technologies and over such a long period of history.This regularity is suitable for technology forecasting, as this paper illustrates with explorations of two systems that might appear 30 years in the future from this writing: a heavy infantryman and a tank. In both cases, the regularity helped lead to nonobvious conclusions, particularly regarding the power of the weapons of such future systems.Furthermore, this result suggests a possibility—and related research questions—that even broader collections of technology families might evolve historically in accordance with what might be called universal laws of technological evolution.