It's possible, but things as they were were pushing for a need for the Industrial Revolution. Humanity as it was could only support so many people with the traditional methods of farming and agriculture and the available land. You had a population bomb.
If you delay it whilst having a high population for the pre-industrial capacity, you start to get into dystopia and the philosophy of humanity needing to die from war and famine and suffer to be removed so the population can recycle and thus not overpopulate and all that sort of thing.