Earlier eras cannot be judged as lacking technologies they did not know.

Evidence

In this sense it would be absurd to suppose that a certain state of techniques is restrictive to human possibilities. Of course a contemporary of Duns Scotus is ignorant of the use of the automobile or the airplane; but he appears as ignorant to us and only from our point of view because we privately apprehend him in terms of a world where the automobile and the airplane exist. For him, who has no relation of any kind with these objects and the techniques which refer to them, there exists a kind of absolute, unthinkable, and undecipherable nothingness. Such a nothingness can in no way limit the For-itself which is choosing itself; it can not be apprehended as a lack, no matter how we consider it. The For-itself which historicizes itself in the time of Duns Scotus therefore nihilates itself in the heart of a fullness of being—that is, of a world which like ours is everything which it can be. It would be absurd to declare that the Albigenses lacked heavy artillery to use in resisting Simon de Montfort; for the Seigneur de Trencavel or the Comte de Toulouse chose themselves such as they were in a world in which artillery had no place: they viewed politics in that world; they made plans for military resistance in that world; they chose themselves as sympathizers with the Cathari in that world; and as they were only what they chose to be, they were absolutely in a world as absolutely full as that of the Panzer-divisionen or of the R.A.F. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1226

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Milgrom/Roberts point about judging past institutions only from within their informational world — and prefigures the historical-ontological stance the reader takes into Beauvoir. — connects to: Genocide cannot be blamed on neutral technology availability — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 397; Science in the singular did not exist before the eighteenth century. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 198; Pre-computer acoustics could not test designs before construction. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2576 (+2 more)
• SEED: An essay angle reversing presentist judgments: the Albigenses aren’t ‘behind’ moderns in technology because the absence is not a lack.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the top-tier insight of the two paragraphs — a genuinely paradigm-shifting refutation of historical presentism grounded in ontology.

Broader Connections

• Genocide cannot be blamed on neutral technology availability #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 397
• Pre-computer acoustics could not test designs before construction. #qualifies (0.80) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2576
• Science in the singular did not exist before the eighteenth century. #exemplifies (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 198
• Humanism created a consciousness of historical depth that earlier epochs lacked. #corroborates (0.75) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 286
• Historical inevitability claims overreach; the past never dictates the future #corroborates (0.70)