Progress

John Gast, American Progress, c. 1872

Progress is the movement towards a

refined, improved, or otherwise desired
state[1][2][3] or, in the context of
progressivism, the idea that
advancements in technology, science, and
social organization can result in an
improved human condition; the latter may
happen as a result of direct human action,
as in social enterprise or through activism,
or as a natural part of sociocultural
evolution.

The concept of progress was introduced in

the early 19th-century social theories,
especially social evolution as described by
Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It
was present in the Enlightenment's
philosophies of history. As a goal, social
progress has been advocated by varying
realms of political ideologies with different
theories on how it is to be achieved.

Measuring progress
Specific indicators for measuring progress
can range from economic data, technical
innovations, change in the political or legal
system, and questions bearing on
individual life chances, such as life
expectancy and risk of disease and
disability.

GDP growth has become a key orientation

for politics and is often taken as a key
figure to evaluate a politician's
performance. However, GDP has a number
of flaws that make it a bad measure of
progress, especially for developed
countries. For example, environmental
damage is not taken into account nor is
the sustainability of economic activity.
Wikiprogress has been set up to share
information on evaluating societal
progress. It aims to facilitate the exchange
of ideas, initiatives and knowledge.
HumanProgress.org is another online
resource that seeks to compile data on
different measures of societal progress.

The Social Progress Index is a tool

developed by the International
Organization Imperative Social Progress,
which measures the extent to which
countries cover social and environmental
needs of its citizenry. There are fifty-two
indicators in three areas or dimensions:
Basic Human Needs, and Foundations of
Wellbeing and Opportunities which show
the relative performance of nations.

Indices that can be used to measure

progress include:

Broad measures of economic progress

Disability-adjusted life year
Green national product
Gender-related Development Index
Genuine Progress Indicator
 Gross National Happiness
Gross National Well-being
Happy Planet Index
Human Development Index
Legatum Prosperity Index
Social Progress Index
OECD Better Life Index
Subjective life satisfaction
Where-to-be-born Index
Wikiprogress
World Happiness Report
World Values Survey

Scientific progress
Scientific progress is the idea that the
scientific community learns more over
time, which causes a body of scientific
knowledge to accumulate.[4] The chemists
in the 19th century knew less about
chemistry than the chemists in the 20th
century, and they in turn knew less than
the chemists in the 21st century. Looking
forward, today's chemists reasonably
expect that chemists in future centuries
will know more than they do.[4]

This process differs from non-science

fields, such as human languages or
history: the people who spoke a now-
extinct language, or who lived through a
historical time period, can be said to have
known different things from the scholars
who studied it later, but they cannot be
said to know less about their lives than the
modern scholars.[4] Some valid knowledge
is lost through the passage of time, and
other knowledge is gained, with the result
that the non-science fields do not make
scientific progress towards understanding
their subject areas.[4]

From the 18th century through late 20th

century, the history of science, especially
of the physical and biological sciences,
was often presented as a progressive
accumulation of knowledge, in which true
theories replaced false beliefs.[5] Some
more recent historical interpretations,
such as those of Thomas Kuhn, tend to
portray the history of science in terms of
competing paradigms or conceptual
systems in a wider matrix of intellectual,
cultural, economic and political trends.
These interpretations, however, have met
with opposition for they also portray the
history of science as an incoherent system
of incommensurable paradigms, not
leading to any scientific progress, but only
to the illusion of progress.[6]

Social progress
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Aspects of social progress, as described

by Condorcet, have included the
disappearance of slavery, the rise of
literacy, the lessening of inequalities
between the sexes, reforms of harsh
prisons and the decline of poverty.[7]

Status of women

How progress improved the status of

women in traditional society was a major
theme of historians starting in the
Enlightenment and continuing to today.[8]
British theorists William Robertson (1721–
1793) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797),
along with many of their contemporaries,
remained committed to Christian- and
republican-based conceptions of virtue,
while working within a new Enlightenment
paradigm. The political agenda related
beauty, taste, and morality to the
imperatives and needs of modern
societies of a high level of sophistication
and differentiation. Two themes in the
work of Robertson and Burke—the nature
of women in 'savage' and 'civilized'
societies and 'beauty in distress'—reveals
how long-held convictions about the
character of women, especially with regard
to their capacity and right to appear in the
public domain, were modified and
adjusted to the idea of progress and
became central to modern European
civilization.[9]

Classics experts have examined the status

of women in the ancient world, concluding
that in the Roman Empire, with its superior
social organization, internal peace, and
rule of law, allowed women to enjoy a
somewhat better standing than in ancient
Greece, where women were distinctly
inferior.[10] The inferior status of women in
traditional China has raised the issue of
whether the idea of progress requires a
thoroughgoing reject of traditionalism—a
belief held by many Chinese reformers in
the early 20th century.[11]

Historians Leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish

asking, "Should we in fact abandon the
idea of progress as a view of the past,"
answer that there is no doubt "that the
status of women has improved markedly"
in cultures that have adopted the
Enlightenment idea of progress.[12]

Modernization
Modernization was promoted by classical
liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries, who
called for the rapid modernization of the
economy and society to remove the
traditional hindrances to free markets and
free movements of people.[13] During the
Enlightenment in Europe social
commentators and philosophers began to
realize that people themselves could
change society and change their way of
life. Instead of being made completely by
gods, there was increasing room for the
idea that people themselves made their
own society—and not only that, as
Giambattista Vico argued, because people
made their own society, they could also
fully comprehend it. This gave rise to new
sciences, or proto-sciences, which claimed
to provide new scientific knowledge about
what society was like, and how one may
change it for the better.[14]

In turn, this gave rise to progressive

opinion, in contrast with conservational
opinion. The social conservationists were
skeptical about panaceas for social ills.
According to conservatives, attempts to
radically remake society normally make
things worse. Edmund Burke was the
leading exponent of this, although later-
day liberals like Hayek have espoused
similar views. They argue that society
changes organically and naturally, and that
grand plans for the remaking of society,
like the French Revolution, National
Socialism and Communism hurt society by
removing the traditional constraints on the
exercise of power.

The scientific advances of the 16th and

17th centuries provided a basis for Francis
Bacon's book the New Atlantis. In the 17th
century, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
described progress with respect to arts
and the sciences, saying that each age has
the advantage of not having to rediscover
what was accomplished in preceding
ages. The epistemology of John Locke
provided further support and was
popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot,
Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a
powerful influence on the American
Founding Fathers.[15] The first complete
statement of progress is that of Turgot, in
his "A Philosophical Review of the
Successive Advances of the Human Mind"
(1750). For Turgot, progress covers not
only the arts and sciences but, on their
base, the whole of culture—manner, mores,
institutions, legal codes, economy, and
society. Condorcet predicted the
disappearance of slavery, the rise of
literacy, the lessening of inequalities
between the sexes, reforms of harsh
prisons and the decline of poverty.[16]
John Stuart Mill's (1806–1873) ethical and
political thought demonstrated faith in the
power of ideas and of intellectual
education for improving human nature or
behavior. For those who do not share this
faith the idea of progress becomes
questionable.[17]

Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), a British

economist of the early 20th century, was a
proponent of classical liberalism. In his
highly influential Principles of Economics
(1890), he was deeply interested in human
progress and in what is now called
sustainable development. For Marshall, the
importance of wealth lay in its ability to
promote the physical, mental, and moral
health of the general population.[18] After
World War II, the modernization and
development programs undertaken in the
Third World were typically based on the
idea of progress.[19]

In Russia the notion of progress was first

imported from the West by Peter the Great
(1672–1725). An absolute ruler, he used
the concept to modernize Russia and to
legitimize his monarchy (unlike its usage
in Western Europe, where it was primarily
associated with political opposition). By
the early 19th century, the notion of
progress was being taken up by Russian
intellectuals and was no longer accepted
as legitimate by the tsars. Four schools of
thought on progress emerged in 19th-
century Russia: conservative (reactionary),
religious, liberal, and socialist—the latter
winning out in the form of Bolshevist
materialism.[20]

The intellectual leaders of the American

Revolution, such as Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and
John Adams, were immersed in
Enlightenment thought and believed the
idea of progress meant that they could
reorganize the political system to the
benefit of the human condition; both for
Americans and also, as Jefferson put it,
for an "Empire of Liberty" that would
benefit all mankind.[21] In particular,
Adams wrote “I must study politics and
war, that our sons may have liberty to
study mathematics and philosophy. Our
sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and
naval architecture, navigation, commerce
and agriculture in order to give their
children a right to study painting, poetry,
music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and
porcelain.”

Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884) was

one of the most influential political
theorists in Argentina. Economic
liberalism was the key to his idea of
progress. He promoted faith in progress,
while chiding fellow Latin Americans for
blind copying of American and European
models. He hoped for progress through
promotion of immigration, education, and
a moderate type of federalism and
republicanism that might serve as a
transition in Argentina to true
democracy.[22]

In Mexico, José María Luis Mora (1794–

1850) was a leader of classical liberalism
in the first generation after independence,
leading the battle against the conservative
trinity of the army, the church, and the
hacendados. He envisioned progress as
both a process of human development by
the search for philosophical truth and as
the introduction of an era of material
prosperity by technological advancement.
His plan for Mexican reform demanded a
republican government bolstered by
widespread popular education free of
clerical control, confiscation and sale of
ecclesiastical lands as a means of
redistributing income and clearing
government debts, and effective control of
a reduced military force by the
government. Mora also demanded the
establishment of legal equality between
native Mexicans and foreign residents. His
program, untried in his lifetime, became
the key element in the Mexican
Constitution of 1857.[23]

In Italy, the idea that progress in science

and technology would lead to solutions for
human ills was connected to the
nationalism that united the country in
1860. The Piedmontese Prime Minister
Camillo Cavour envisaged the railways as
a major factor in the modernization and
unification of the Italian peninsula. The
new Kingdom of Italy, formed in 1861,
worked to speed up the processes of
modernization and industrialization that
had begun in the north, but were slow to
arrive in the Papal States and central Italy,
and were nowhere in sight in the
"Mezzogiorno" (that is, Southern Italy,
Sicily, and Sardinia). The government
sought to combat the backwardness of
the poorer regions in the south and work
towards augmenting the size and quality
of the newly created Italian army so that it
could compete on an equal footing with
the powerful nations of Europe. In the
same period, the government was
legislating in favour of public education to
fight the great problem of illiteracy,
upgrade the teaching classes, improve
existing schools, and procure the funds
needed for social hygiene and care of the
body as factors in the physical and moral
regeneration of the race.[24]

In China, in the 20th century the

Kuomintang or Nationalist party, which
ruled from the 1920s to the 1940s,
advocated progress. The Communists
under Mao Zedong adopted western
models and their ruinous projects caused
mass famines. After Mao's death, however,
the new regime led by Deng Xiaoping
(1904–1997) and his successors
aggressively promoted modernization of
the economy using capitalist models and
imported western technology.[25] This was
termed the "Opening of China" in the west,
and more broadly encompasses Chinese
economic reform.

Among environmentalists, there is a

continuum between two opposing poles.
The one pole is optimistic, progressive,
and business-oriented, and endorses the
classic idea of progress. For example,
bright green environmentalism endorses
the idea that new designs, social
innovations and green technologies can
solve critical environmental challenges.
The other is pessimistic in respect of
technological solutions,[26] warning of
impending global crisis (through climate
change or peak oil, for example) and tends
to reject the very idea of modernity and the
myth of progress that is so central to
modernization thinking.[27] Similarly,
Kirkpatrick Sale, wrote about progress as a
myth benefiting the few, and a pending
environmental doomsday for everyone.[28]
An example is the philosophy of Deep
Ecology.

Philosophy
Sociologist Robert Nisbet said that "No
single idea has been more important than
... the Idea of Progress in Western
civilization for three thousand years",[29]
and defines five "crucial premises" of the
idea of progress:

1. value of the past

2. nobility of Western civilization
3. worth of economic/technological
growth
4. faith in reason and
scientific/scholarly knowledge
obtained through reason
5. intrinsic importance and worth of life
on earth

Sociologist P. A. Sorokin said, "The ancient

Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Roman,
and most of the medieval thinkers
supporting theories of rhythmical, cyclical
or trendless movements of social
processes were much nearer to reality
than the present proponents of the linear
view".[30] Unlike Confucianism and to a
certain extent Taoism, that both search for
an ideal past, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
tradition believes in the fulfillment of
history, which was translated into the idea
of progress in the modern age. Therefore,
Chinese proponents of modernization
have looked to western models. According
to Thompson, the late Qing dynasty
reformer, Kang Youwei, believed he had
found a model for reform and
"modernisation" in the Ancient Chinese
Classics.[31]

Philosopher Karl Popper said that

progress was not fully adequate as a
scientific explanation of social
phenomena.[32] More recently, Kirkpatrick
Sale, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite author,
wrote exclusively about progress as a
myth, in an essay entitled "Five Facets of a
Myth".[33]

Iggers (1965) says that proponents of

progress underestimated the extent of
man's destructiveness and irrationality,
while critics misunderstand the role of
rationality and morality in human
behavior.[34]

In 1946, psychoanalyst Charles Baudouin

claimed modernity has retained the
"corollary" of the progress myth, the idea
that the present is superior to the past,
while at the same time insisting that it is
free of the myth:

The last two centuries were

familiar with the myth of
progress. Our own century has
adopted the myth of modernity.
The one myth has replaced the
other. ...

Men ceased to believe in

progress; but only to pin their
faith to more tangible realities,
whose sole original significance
had been that they were the
instruments of progress. ..

This exaltation of the present ...

is a corollary of that very faith
in progress which people claim
to have discarded. The present is
superior to the past, by
 definition, only in a mythology
of progress. Thus one retains the
corollary while rejecting the
principle. There is only one way
of retaining a position of whose
instability one is conscious. One
must simply refrain from
thinking.[35]

A cyclical theory of history was adopted by

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), a German
historian who wrote The Decline of the
West in 1920. World War I, World War II,
and the rise of totalitarianism
demonstrated that progress was not
automatic and that technological
improvement did not necessarily
guarantee democracy and moral
advancement. British historian Arnold J.
Toynbee (1889–1975) felt that Christianity
would help modern civilization overcome
its challenges.[36]

The Jeffersonians said that history is not

exhausted but that man may begin again
in a new world. Besides rejecting the
lessons of the past, they Americanized the
idea of progress by democratizing and
vulgarizing it to include the welfare of the
common man as a form of republicanism.
As Romantics deeply concerned with the
past, collecting source materials and
founding historical societies, the Founding
Fathers were animated by clear principles.
They saw man in control of his destiny,
saw virtue as a distinguishing
characteristic of a republic, and were
concerned with happiness, progress, and
prosperity. Thomas Paine, combining the
spirit of rationalism and romanticism,
pictured a time when America's innocence
would sound like a romance, and
concluded that the fall of America could
mark the end of 'the noblest work of
human wisdom.'[37]
Historian J. B. Bury wrote in 1920:[38]

To the minds of most people the

desirable outcome of human
development would be a
condition of society in which all
the inhabitants of the planet
would enjoy a perfectly happy
existence....It cannot be proved
that the unknown destination
towards which man is
advancing is desirable. The
movement may be Progress, or
it may be in an undesirable
 direction and therefore not
Progress..... The Progress of
humanity belongs to the same
order of ideas as Providence or
personal immortality. It is true
or it is false, and like them it
cannot be proved either true or
false. Belief in it is an act of
faith.

In the postmodernist thought steadily

gaining ground from the 1980s, the
grandiose claims of the modernizers are
steadily eroded, and the very concept of
social progress is again questioned and
scrutinized. In the new vision, radical
modernizers like Joseph Stalin and Mao
Zedong appear as totalitarian despots,
whose vision of social progress is held to
be totally deformed. Postmodernists
question the validity of 19th-century and
20th-century notions of progress—both on
the capitalist and the Marxist side of the
spectrum. They argue that both capitalism
and Marxism over-emphasize
technological achievements and material
prosperity while ignoring the value of inner
happiness and peace of mind.
Postmodernism posits that both dystopia
and utopia are one and the same,
overarching grand narratives with
impossible conclusions.

Some 20th-century authors refer to the

"Myth of Progress" to refer to the idea that
the human condition will inevitably
improve. In 1932, English physician
Montague David Eder wrote: "The myth of
progress states that civilization has
moved, is moving, and will move in a
desirable direction. Progress is inevitable...
Philosophers, men of science and
politicians have accepted the idea of the
inevitability of progress."[39] Eder argues
that the advancement of civilization is
leading to greater unhappiness and loss of
control in the environment. The strongest
critics of the idea of progress complain
that it remains a dominant idea in the 21st
century, and shows no sign of diminished
influence. As one fierce critic, British
historian John Gray (b. 1948),
concludes:[40]

Faith in the liberating power of

knowledge is encrypted into
modern life. Drawing on some of
Europe's most ancient
traditions, and daily reinforced
by the quickening advance of
science, it cannot be given up by
an act of will. The interaction of
quickening scientific advance
with unchanging human needs
is a fate that we may perhaps
temper, but cannot overcome...
Those who hold to the
possibility of progress need not
fear. The illusion that through
science humans can remake the
world is an integral part of the
modern condition. Renewing the
eschatological hopes of the past,
progress is an illusion with a
future.
Recently the idea of progress has been
generalized to psychology, being related
with the concept of a goal, that is,
progress is understood as "what counts as
a means of advancing towards the end
result of a given defined goal."[41]

Antiquity

Historian J. B. Bury said that thought in

ancient Greece was dominated by the
theory of world-cycles or the doctrine of
eternal return, and was steeped in a belief
parallel to the Judaic "fall of man," but
rather from a preceding "Golden Age" of
innocence and simplicity. Time was
generally regarded as the enemy of
humanity which depreciates the value of
the world. He credits the Epicureans with
having had a potential for leading to the
foundation of a theory of progress through
their materialistic acceptance of the
atomism of Democritus as the explanation
for a world without an intervening deity.
“ For them, the earliest condition of
men resembled that of the beasts,
and from this primitive and
miserable condition they laboriously
reached the existing state of
civilisation, not by external guidance
or as a consequence of some initial
design, but simply by the exercise of
human intelligence throughout a
long period. ”
Robert Nisbet and Gertrude Himmelfarb
have attributed a notion of progress to
other Greeks. Xenophanes said "The gods
did not reveal to men all things in the
beginning, but men through their own
search find in the course of time that
which is better." Plato's Book III of The
Laws depicts humanity's progress from a
state of nature to the higher levels of
culture, economy, and polity. Plato's The
Statesman also outlines a historical
account of the progress of mankind.

Renaissance

During the Medieval period, science was to

a large extent based on Scholastic (a
method of thinking and learning from the
Middle Ages) interpretations of Aristotle's
work. The Renaissance of the 15th, 16th
and 17th Centuries changed the mindset
in Europe towards an empirical view,
based on a pantheistic interpretation of
Plato. This induced a revolution in
curiosity about nature in general and
scientific advance, which opened the gates
for technical and economic advance.
Furthermore, the individual potential was
seen as a never-ending quest for being
God-like, paving the way for a view of Man
based on unlimited perfection and
progress.[42]

The Enlightenment (1650–

1800)
In the Enlightenment, French historian and
philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778) was a
major proponent. At first Voltaire's thought
was informed by the idea of progress
coupled with rationalism. His subsequent
notion of the historical idea of progress
saw science and reason as the driving
forces behind societal advancement.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that

progress is neither automatic nor
continuous and does not measure
knowledge or wealth, but is a painful and
largely inadvertent passage from
barbarism through civilization toward
enlightened culture and the abolition of
war. Kant called for education, with the
education of humankind seen as a slow
process whereby world history propels
mankind toward peace through war,
international commerce, and enlightened
self-interest.[43]

Scottish theorist Adam Ferguson (1723–

1816) defined human progress as the
working out of a divine plan, though he
rejected predestination. The difficulties
and dangers of life provided the necessary
stimuli for human development, while the
uniquely human ability to evaluate led to
ambition and the conscious striving for
excellence. But he never adequately
analyzed the competitive and aggressive
consequences stemming from his
emphasis on ambition even though he
envisioned man's lot as a perpetual
striving with no earthly culmination. Man
found his happiness only in effort.[44]

Some scholars consider the idea of

progress that was affirmed with the
Enlightenment, as a secularization of ideas
from early Christianity, and a reworking of
ideas from ancient Greece.[45][46][47]

Romanticism
In the 19th century, Romantic critics
charged that progress did not
automatically better the human condition,
and in some ways could make it worse.[48]
Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) reacted
against the concept of progress as set
forth by William Godwin and Condorcet
because he believed that inequality of
conditions is "the best (state) calculated to
develop the energies and faculties of
man". He said, "Had population and food
increased in the same ratio, it is probable
that man might never have emerged from
the savage state". He argued that man's
capacity for improvement has been
demonstrated by the growth of his
intellect, a form of progress which offsets
the distresses engendered by the law of
population.[49]

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844–1900) criticized the idea of
progress as the 'weakling's doctrines of
optimism,' and advocated undermining
concepts such as faith in progress, to
allow the strong individual to stand above
the plebeian masses. An important part of
his thinking consists of the attempt to use
the classical model of 'eternal recurrence
of the same' to dislodge the idea of
progress.[50]
Iggers (1965) argues there was general
agreement in the late 19th century that the
steady accumulation of knowledge and
the progressive replacement of
conjectural, that is, theological or
metaphysical, notions by scientific ones
was what created progress. Most scholars
concluded this growth of scientific
knowledge and methods led to the growth
of industry and the transformation of
warlike societies into an industrial and
pacific one. They agreed as well that there
had been a systematic decline of coercion
in government, and an increasing role of
liberty and of rule by consent. There was
more emphasis on impersonal social and
historical forces; progress was
increasingly seen as the result of an inner
logic of society.[51]

Marxist theory (late 19th

century)

Marx developed a theory of historical

materialism. He describes the mid-19th-
century condition in The Communist
Manifesto as follows:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist

without constantly
revolutionizing the instruments
of production, and thereby the
relations of production, and
with them the whole relations of
society. Conservation of the old
modes of production in
unaltered form, was, on the
contrary, the first condition of
existence for all earlier
industrial classes. Constant
revolutionizing of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting
uncertainty, and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch
from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast frozen relations, with their
train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are
swept away, all new-formed
ones become antiquated before
they can ossify. All that is solid
melts into air, all which is holy
is profaned, and man is at last
compelled to face with sober
senses his real condition of life
and his relations with his
kind.[52]
Furthermore, Marx described the process
of social progress, which in his opinion is
based on the interaction between the
productive forces and the relations of
production:

No social order is ever destroyed

before all the productive forces
for which it is sufficient have
been developed, and new
superior relations of production
never replace older ones before
the material conditions for their
existence have matured within
 the framework of the old
society.[53]

Capitalism is thought by Marx as a

process of continual change, in which the
growth of markets dissolve all fixities in
human life, and Marx admits that
capitalism is progressive and non-
reactionary. Marxism further states that
capitalism, in its quest for higher profits
and new markets, will inevitably sow the
seeds of its own destruction. Marxists
believe that, in the future, capitalism will
be replaced by socialism and eventually
communism.
“ The reasonable man adapts himself
to the world. The unreasonable man
persists in trying to adapt the world
to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man. ”
— George Bernard Shaw

Many advocates of capitalism such as

Schumpeter agreed with Marx's analysis
of capitalism as a process of continual
change through creative destruction, but,
unlike Marx, believed and hoped that
capitalism could essentially go on forever.

Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century,

two opposing schools of thought—
Marxism and liberalism—believed in the
possibility and the desirability of continual
change and improvement. Marxists
strongly opposed capitalism and the
liberals strongly supported it, but the one
concept they could both agree on was
modernism, a trend of thought which
affirms the power of human beings to
make, improve and reshape their society,
with the aid of scientific knowledge,
technology and practical experimentation.

See also
Accelerating change
Constitutional economics
Global social change research project
Happiness economics
Leisure satisfaction
Law of social cycle
Money-rich, time-poor
Progressive utilization theory
Psychometrics
Social development
Social change
Social justice
Social order
Social regress
Sociocultural evolution
Technological progress
Notes
1. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dict
ionary/english/progress
2. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/defi
nition/progress
3. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio
nary/english/progress
4. Wesseling, Henk (August 1998).
"History: Science or art?" . European
Review. 6 (3): 265–267.
doi:10.1017/S106279870000329X .
ISSN 1474-0575 .
5. Golinski, Jan (2001). Making Natural
Knowledge: Constructivism and the
History of Science (reprint ed.).
University of Chicago Press. p. 2.
ISBN 9780226302324. "When [history
of science] began, during the
eighteenth century, it was practiced by
scientists (or "natural philosophers")
with an interest in validating and
defending their enterprise. They wrote
histories in which ... the science of the
day was exhibited as the outcome of
the progressive accumulation of
human knowledge, which was an
integral part of moral and cultural
development."
6. Kuhn, T., 1962, "The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions", University of
Chicago Press, p. 137: "Partly by
selection and partly by distortion, the
scientists of earlier ages are implicitly
presented as having worked upon the
same set of fixed problems and in
accordance with the same set of fixed
canons that the most recent revolution
in scientific theory and method made
seem scientific."
7. Nisbet, Robert (1980). History of the
Idea of Progress. New York: Basic
Books Ch. 5
8. Allen, Ann Taylor (1999). "Feminism,
Social Science, and the Meanings of
Modernity: the Debate on the Origin of
the Family in Europe and the United
States, 1860–914," American
Historical Review 104 (4): 1085–113;
Nyland, Chris (1993). "Adam Smith,
Stage Theory, and the Status of
Women," History of Political Economy
25 (4): 617–40.
9. Kontler, László (2004). "Beauty or
Beast, or Monstrous Regiments?
Robertson and Burke on Women and
the Public Scene," Modern Intellectual
History 1 (3): 305–30.
10. Dimand, Robert William, & Chris
Nyland (2003). The Status of Women
in Classical Economic Thought.
Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 109; Ryrie,
Charles Caldwell (1958). The Place of
Women in the Church, The Macmillan
Company, Ch 1.
11. Vernoff, Edward, & Peter J. Seybolt,
(2007). Through Chinese Eyes:
Tradition, Revolution, and
Transformation, APEX Press, pp. 45ff.
12. Marx, Leo, & Bruce Mazlish (1998).
Progress: Fact or Illusion?. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, p. 5.
13. Appleby, Joyce; Lynn Hunt, and
Margaret Jacob (1995). Telling the
Truth about History. W.W. Norton, p.
78.
14. The following annotated reference list
appears in J. B. Bury's study: The Idea
of Progress, published in 1920 and
available in full on the web :

The history of the idea of

Progress has been treated
briefly and partially by
various French writers; e.g.
Comte, Cours de philosophie
positive, vi. 321 sqq.;
Buchez, Introduction a la
science de l'histoire, i. 99
sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De
l'idee de progres (1850);
Rigault, Histoire de la
querelle des Anciens et des
Modernes (1856); Bouillier,
Histoire de la philosophie
cartesienne (1854); Caro,
Problemes de la morale
sociale (1876); Brunetiere,
"La Formation de l'idee de
progres", in Etudes
critiques, 5e serie. More
recently M. Jules Delvaille
has attempted to trace its
history fully, down to the
end of the eighteenth
century. His Histoire de
l'idee de progres (1910) is
planned on a large scale; he
is erudite and has read
extensively. But his
treatment is lacking in the
power of discrimination. He
strikes one as anxious to
bring within his net, as
theoriciens du progres, as
many distinguished thinkers
as possible; and so, along
with a great deal that is
useful and relevant, we also
find in his book much that is
irrelevant. He has not
clearly seen that the
distinctive idea of Progress
was not conceived in
antiquity or in the Middle
Ages, or even in the
Renaissance period; and
when he comes to modern
times he fails to bring out
clearly the decisive steps of
its growth. And he does not
seem to realize that a man
might be "progressive"
without believing in, or even
thinking about, the doctrine
of Progress. Leonardo da
Vinci and Berkeley are
examples. In my Ancient
Greek Historians (1909) I
dwelt on the modern origin
of the idea (p. 253 sqq.).
Recently Mr. R. H. Murray,
in a learned appendix to his
Erasmus and Luther, has
developed the thesis that
Progress was not grasped in
antiquity (though he makes
 an exception of Seneca),—a
welcome confirmation.

15. Pangle, Thomas L. (1990). The Spirit

of Modern Republicanism: The Moral
Vision of the American Founders and
the Philosophy of Locke. University of
Chicago Press.
16. Nisbet, Robert (1980). History of the
Idea of Progress. New York: Basic
Books Ch. 5
17. Nisbet (1980) pp. 224–29.
18. Caldari, Katia (2004). "Alfred Marshall's
Idea of Progress and Sustainable
Development," Journal of the History
of Economic Thought, 26 (4): 519–36.
19. Arndt, H. W. (1989). Economic
Development: The History of an Idea.
University of Chicago Press.
20. Ellison, Herbert J. (1965). "Economic
Modernization in Imperial Russia:
Purposes and Achievements," Journal
of Economic History 25 (4): 523–40.
21. Commager, Henry Steele (1969). "The
Past as an Extension of the Present,"
Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp.
17–27.
22. Dougherty, John E. (1973). "Juan
Bautista Alberdi: A Study of His
Thought," Americas 29 (4): 489–501.
23. Hart, John M. (1972). "Jose Mora: His
Idea of Progress and the Origins of
Mexican Liberalism," North Dakota
Quarterly 40 (2): 22–29.
24. DalLago, Enrico (2002). The American
South and the Italian Mezzogiorno:
Essays in Comparative History.
Palgrave Macmillan.
25. Smirnov, Dmitry (2004). "Deng
Xiaoping and the Modernization of
China," Far Eastern Affairs 32 (4): 20–
31.
26. Huesemann, Michael H., and Joyce A.
Huesemann (2011). Technofix: Why
Technology Won’t Save Us or the
Environment , Chapter 9,
"Technological Optimism and Belief in
Progress", New Society Publishers,
Gabriola Island, British Columbia,
Canada, ISBN 0865717044, 464 pp.
27. Jamison, Andrew (2001). The Making
of Green Knowledge: Environmental
Politics and Cultural Transformation.
Cambridge University Press, pp 28ff.
28. Five Facets of a Myth
29. Nisbet (1980) p. 4.
30. P. A. Sorokin, 1932 paper, quoted in
Fay (1947).
31. Youwei, Kang, & Lawrence G.
Thompson (1958). Ta T'ung Shu: The
One World Philosophy of Kang Yu-wei.
London: Allen & Unwin.
32. Popper (1957). The Poverty of
Historicism. Routledge.
33. Five Facets of a Myth
34. Iggers (1965) p. 16.
35. Charles Baudouin, The Myth of
Modernity, Le Mythe du moderne
(1946), as translated by Bernard Miall
(1950), sections 1–7.
36. Farrenkopf, John (1993). "Spengler's
Historical Pessimism and the Tragedy
of our Age," Theory and Society Vol.
22, Number 3, pp. 391–412.
37. Commager, Henry Steele (1969). "The
Past as an Extension of the Present,"
Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp.
17–27.
38. Bury (1920). The Idea of Progress .
London: Macmillan and Co., p. 2.
39. David Eder, Montague (1932). "The
Myth of Progress" . D. Eder. 'the Myth
of Progress.' the British Journal of
Medical Psychology 1932, Vol. Xii, P.
1.. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 14: 399.
40. Gray, John (2004). "An Illusion with a
Future," Daedalus Vol. 133(3), pp 10+;
also Gray (2004). Heresies: Against
Progress and Other Illusions. Granta
Books.
41. Cerbaro, R. H. and Whisler, J. L.
(2016). The Idea of Progress: A
Theoretical and Concise Goal-
Structure Model. Current Research in
Psychology, 7 (1): 12.15, p. 13. DOI:
10.3844/crpsp.2016.12.15 [1]
42. Cassirer, Ernst; Paul Oskar Kristeller
and John Herman Randall (eds.,
1948). The Renaissance Philosophy of
Man. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
43. Schuler, Jeanne A. (1991).
"Reasonable Hope: Kant as Critical
Theorist," History of European Ideas,
21 (4): 527–33.
44. Bernstein, John Andrew (1978). "Adam
Ferguson and the Idea of Progress,"
Studies in Burke and His Time 19 (2):
99–118.
45. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of
Political Thought By David Miller,
Janet Coleman, p.402.
46. Nisbet, Robert (1980). History of the
Idea of Progress. New York: Basic
Books.
47. Ludwig Edelstein takes a minority view
in seeing evidence for The Idea of
Progress in Classical Antiquity, Johns
Hopkins Press (1967).
48. Murray, Christopher John, ed. (2004).
Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era,
1760–1850. Fitzroy Dearborn, Vol. II, p.
912.
49. Levin, Samuel M. (1966). "Malthus and
the Idea of Progress," Journal of the
History of Ideas 27 (1): 92–108.
50. Tassone, Giuseppe (2002). A Study on
the Idea of Progress in Nietzsche,
Heidegger and Critical Theory. E.
Mellen Press.
51. Iggers, George G. (1965). "The Idea of
Progress: A Critical Reassessment,"
American Historical Review, Vol. 71,
No. 1, pp. 1–17.
52. Manifesto of the Communist Party:
Chapter 1, Marx & Engels
53. Marx, Karl. "Preface" . Critique of
political economy.

Further reading
Alexander, Jeffrey C., & Piotr Sztompka
(1990). Rethinking Progress: Movements,
Forces, and Ideas at the End of the 20th
Century . Boston: Unwin Hymans.
Becker, Carl L. (1932). Progress and Power.
Stanford University Press.
Benoist, Alan de (2008). "A Brief History of
the Idea of Progress," The Occidental
Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 1, pp. 7–16.
Brunetière, Ferdinand (1922). "La Formation
de l'Idée de Progrés." In: Études Critiques.
Paris: Librairie Hachette, pp. 183–250.
Burgess, Yvonne (1994). The Myth of
Progress. Wild Goose Publications.
Bury, J.B. (1920). The Idea of Progress: An
Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (mirror ).
London: The Macmillan and Co.
Dawson, Christopher (1929). Progress and
Religion. London: Sheed & Ward.
Dodds, E.R. (1985). The Ancient Concept of
Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature
and Belief. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Doren, Charles Van (1967). The Idea of
Progress. New York: Praeger.
Fay, Sidney B. (1947). "The Idea of Progress,"
American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 2,
pp. 231–46 in JSTOR , reflections after two
world wars.
Iggers, Georg G. (1965). "The Idea of
Progress: A Critical Reassessment,"
American Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 1,
pp. 1–17 in JSTOR , emphasis on 20th-
century philosophies of history
Inge, William Ralph (1922). "The Idea of
Progress." In: Outspoken Essays, Second
series. London: Longmans, Green & Co.,
pp. 158–83.
Kauffman, Bill. (1998). With Good Intentions?
Reflections on the Myth of Progress in
America. Praeger online edition , based on
interviews in a small town.
Lasch, Christopher (1991). The True and Only
Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. W. W. Norton
online edition
Mackenzie, J. S. (1899). "The Idea of
Progress," International Journal of Ethics,
Vol. IX, No. 2, pp. 195–213, representative of
late 19th-century approaches
Mathiopoulos, Margarita. History and
Progress: In Search of the European and
American Mind (1989) online edition
Melzer, Arthur M. et al. eds. History and the
Idea of Progress (1995), scholars discuss
Machiavelli, Kant, Nietzsche, Spengler and
others online edition
Nisbet, Robert (1979). "The Idea of
Progress," Literature of Liberty, Vol. II, No. 1,
pp. 7–37.
 Nisbet, Robert (1980). History of the Idea
of Progress. New York: Basic Books.
Painter, George S. (1922). "The Idea of
Progress," American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 257–82.
Pollard, Sidney (1971). The Idea of Progress:
History and Society. New York: Pelican.
Rescher, Nicholas; Scientific Progress
(Oxford: Blackwells, 1978).
Sklair, Leslie (1970). The Sociology of
Progress. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul. online edition
Slaboch, Matthew W. (2018). A Road to
Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics.
Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Spadafora, David (1990). The Idea of
Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain. Yale
University Press.
Spalding, Henry Norman, Civilization in East
and West : an introduction to the study of
human progress, London, Oxford university
press, H. Milford, 1939.
Teggart, F.J. (1949). The Idea of Progress: A
Collection of Readings. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Tuveson, Ernest Lee (1949). Millennium and
Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea
of Progress. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Wright, Georg Henrik von (1999). The
Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright Lewis
 Edwin Hahn and Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.)
Open Court.
Zarandi, Merhdad M., ed. (2004). Science and
the Myth of Progress. World Wisdom Books.

External links
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