That is a great theory, but it is too narrow. If anything that would be one cause among thousands. A lot of historical theories don't differentiate between actual cause and proximate cause. Proximate cause is the liable cause, or the guilty cause. Actual "but for" causation can't be said to be the guilty factor. The classic example is the botched vasectomy leading to an arsonist being born.

"But for" the botched vasectomy, the arsonist would not have burned down the house, so the house burned down because of the botched vasectomy. When those concepts from the law are applied to history, a lot of these "but for" causations can be revealed as too tenuous to justify an exclusive causation for some historical event or trend hundreds of years later. Just because you can make a causation chain does not mean that it's right to attribute events that are too historically distant.

For example, take this chain of events with legitimately connected causes and effect taken to the extreme:

1. There was already an oil refining industry before the gas engine because people used kerosene as a fuel source for lamps, thereby facilitating the development and adoption of gas engines by the west.

2. Petroleum kerosene had a ready market as soon as it was invented because people already had lamps equipped to burn whale oil, and it could fill that market as a replacement fuel.

3. People learned to burn whale oil after discovering that Sprem Whale oil burned brightly but didn't have the disagreeable odor that burning Right Whale oil did.

4. Europeans developed whaling due to an industry dominated by the Basque for five hundred years. The Basque developed whaling because the Right Whale was prevalent in the Bay of Biscayne, and for all intents and purposes, the Right Whale was the blue bobby of whales, allowing whalers to approach and also coming to the aid of injured whales.

So Europeans invented and adopted the gas engine because Right Whales were native to the Bay of Bisayne? Of course not. Like the botch vasectomy, the "but for" causation is too removed in time and is not justifiable the causation of the house burning down. Such theories may create a "wow - check out this surprise revelation" effect on the reader. But you could apply this butterfly affect in such a way as to make anything the cause of anything, because historical events necessarily become related with everything the further forward in time you go.

As to your example, it just so happens that Newton's experimentation with optics (using glass, prisms, and mirrors) was integral in his discoveries about math and physics, such as the derivative of a curve, the beginnings of calculus, or his application of wave theory to light. But you could also derive the relations of trigonometry to the crest and trough of a wave by observing water, or a rope you whip back and forth. Liebniz went beyond Newton in calculus and didn't make his discoveries by observing optics alone. Moreover, the work of both scientists (and Des Cartes, etc.) was part of a greater social phenomenon called the Enlightenment.

So generally speaking, no, the Chinese would not have colonized the Aztecs if only they drank wine instead of tea. That reasoning could be extrapolated to theoretical butterfly who flapped his wings during the Battle of Thermopylae causing the Holocaust, and should generally be disregarded as of low academic value.

Glass was not widely used in China prior to the 20th century. However, at the same time, glass is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scientific development. There are many areas of thought which can be developed without the use of glass (theoretical physics, mathematics, and engineering are a few examples.)

It may have set the Chinese behind in Chemistry and Astronomy (two areas where glass is necessary), but these two areas did not rise to prominence in the modern world until the 19th and 20th centuries, by which point, China was using glass instruments.