Idea of Progress
Encyclopedia
In historiography
, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress
) through economic development (modernization
), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress
). The assumption is that the process will happen once people apply their reason and skills, for it is not divinely foreordained. The role of the expert is to identify hindrances that slow or neutralize progress.
Historian J. B. Bury
wrote in 1920:
Sociologist Robert Nisbet
finds that "No single idea has been more important than...the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years.", and defines five "crucial premises" of Idea of Progress:
The Idea of Progress emerged primarily in the Enlightenment
in the 18th century. Significant movements in this period were Diderot's Encyclopedia
, which carried on the campaign against authority
and superstition
, and the French Revolution
.
Some scholars consider the idea of progress that was affirmed with the Enlightenment, as a secularization
of ideas from early Christianity, and a rework of ideas from ancient Greece
. The theory of evolution in the nineteenth century made progress a necessary law of nature and gave the doctrine its first conscious scientific form. The idea was challenged by the 20th century realization that destruction, as in the two world wars, could grow out of technical progress.
argued 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. The Roman philosopher Seneca
recognized the progress of knowledge, but he did not expect from it any improvement in the world, because any advance in the arts and inventions promotes deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice. Nisbet notes that the Christian idea of progress is a fusing of Greek and Jewish concepts and that "nothing in the entire history of the idea of progress is more important" than the Christian incorporation of Jewish millenarianism
, resulting in an understanding of time which is optimistic and progressive.,
argued in favor of 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.
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. 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 simply 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.
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.
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.
, Tom 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—for Americans and also, as Jefferson put it, for an "Empire of Liberty
" that would benefit all mankind. Thus was born the idea of inevitable American future progress. What gave the American Revolution its widespread appeal and linked it to all subsequent political revolutions was its association with the Idea of Progress.
The most original 'New World' contribution to historical thought was the idea that history is not exhausted but that man may begin again in a new world. Besides rejecting the lessons of the past, the Jeffersonians 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.'
That human liberty was put on the agenda of fundamental concerns of the modern world was recognized by the revolutionaries as well as by many British commentators. Yet, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution, the American Revolution had to share the spotlight with the French Revolution
. The American Revolution was eclipsed, and, in the 20th century, lost its appeal even for subject peoples involved in similar movements for self-determination. Thus, its life as a model for political revolutions was relatively short. The reason for this development lies in the fact that its concerns and preoccupations were overwhelmingly political; economic demands and social unrest remained largely peripheral. After the middle of the 19th century, all political revolutions would ultimately have to involve themselves with social questions and become revolutions of modernization. But the American Colonies in the 1770s, in contrast to all other colonies, had been modern from the beginning. The American patriots were protecting the modernity and liberty they had already achieved, while later revolutions were fighting to obtain liberty for the first time. However, since so few modern revolutions have evinced much concern for the preservation and extension of human freedom, the American model may still come to provide a lesson for the future.
The notion that America is a highly favorable place for people seeking progress in their own lives comprises the American Dream
.
John Stuart Mill
's (1806–73) ethical and political thought assumed a great 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 very Idea of Progress becomes questionable.
The influential English philosopher Herbert Spencer
(1820–1903) in The Principles of Sociology (1876) and The Principles of Ethics (1879) proclaimed a universal law of socio-political development: societies moved from a military organization to a base in industrial production. As society evolved, he argued, there would be greater individualism, greater altruism, greater co-operation, and a more equal freedom for everyone. The laws of human society would produce the changes, and he said the only role for government was military police, and enforcement of civil contracts in courts. Many libertarians adopted his perspective.
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 the increasing role 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.
(1810–1884) was one of the most influential political theorists in Argentina. Economic liberalism which 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 transition in Argentina to true democracy.
In Mexico, Jose Mora (1795–1856) was a leader of classical liberalism
in the first generation after independence, leading the battle against the conservative trinity, 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 Constitution of 1857 and remains the basic aim of the Mexican government to this day.
rejected western models and their ruinous projects caused mass famines. After Mao's death, however, the new regime led by Deng Xiaoping
(1904–97) and his successors aggressively promoted modernization of the economy using capitalist models and imported western technology.
(1842–1924) was the most influential British economist of the early 20th century, and 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. After World War II, the modernization and development programs undertaken in the Third World were typically based on the Idea of Progress.
(1721–93) and Edmund Burke
(1729–97), 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 an enlightened affirmation of modern European civilization.
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
A fierce opponent of the Idea of Progress was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844–1900), who became the prophet of decadence, scorning the 'weakling's doctrines of optimism,' and in his diagnoses of the times undermining the pillars of modernism, including faith in progress, to allow the strong individual to stand with his radical value system above the plebeian masses. An important part of his radically critical thinking consists of the attempt to use the classical model of 'eternal recurrence of the same' to dislodge the Idea of Progress.
A cyclical theory of history was adopted by Oswald Spengler
(1880–1936), a German historian who wrote a very influential pessimistic study of the end of progress called The Decline of the West (1920). The horrors of World War I
challenged the unblinking optimism of the modernizers. Clearly progress would not be automatic, and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century undercut the idea that technological improvement guaranteed democracy and moral advancement. Spengler was challenged by the optimism of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee
(1889–1975), who felt that Christianity would help modern civilization overcome its challenges.
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, concludes:
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." Eder argues that the advancement of civilization is leading to greater unhappiness and loss of control in the environment.
Sociologist P. A. Sorokin argued, "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."
Philosopher Karl Popper
emphasized the inadequacies of the Idea of Progress as a scientific explanation of social phenomena.
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".
Iggers (1965) says the great failing of the prophets of progress was that they underestimated the extent of man's destructiveness and irrationality. The failing of the critics of the Idea of Progress, he adds, came in misunderstanding the role of rationality and morality in human behavior.
endorses the idea that new designs, social innovations and green technologies can solve critical environmental challenges. The other is pessimistic, warning of impending doom (through global warming, for example) and tends to reject the very idea of modernity and the myth of progress that is so central to modernization thinking. Similarly, Kirkpatrick Sale
, wrote about progress as a myth benefiting the few and pending environmental doomsday for everyone.
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress
Social progress
Social progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. This may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through social activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution...
) through economic development (modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
), and the application of science and technology (scientific progress
Scientific progress
Scientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method.-Discontinuous Model of Scientific Progress:...
). The assumption is that the process will happen once people apply their reason and skills, for it is not divinely foreordained. The role of the expert is to identify hindrances that slow or neutralize progress.
Historian J. B. Bury
J. B. Bury
John Bagnell Bury , known as J. B. Bury, was an Irish historian, classical scholar, Byzantinist and philologist.-Biography:...
wrote in 1920:
Sociologist Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet
Robert Alexander Nisbet was an American sociologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Riverside and as the Albert Schweitzer Professor at Columbia University.-Life:Nisbet was born in Los Angeles in 1913 and raised in the small...
finds that "No single idea has been more important than...the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years.", and defines five "crucial premises" of Idea of Progress:
- value of the past
- nobility of Western civilization
- worth of economic/technological growth
- faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason
- intrinsic importance and worth of life on earth.
The Idea of Progress emerged primarily in the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
in the 18th century. Significant movements in this period were Diderot's Encyclopedia
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
, which carried on the campaign against authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
and superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....
, and the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
.
Some scholars consider the idea of progress that was affirmed with the Enlightenment, as a secularization
Secularization
Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions...
of ideas from early Christianity, and a rework of ideas from ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. The theory of evolution in the nineteenth century made progress a necessary law of nature and gave the doctrine its first conscious scientific form. The idea was challenged by the 20th century realization that destruction, as in the two world wars, could grow out of technical progress.
Antiquity
Historian J. B. BuryJ. B. Bury
John Bagnell Bury , known as J. B. Bury, was an Irish historian, classical scholar, Byzantinist and philologist.-Biography:...
argued that thought in ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
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
Original sin
Original sin is, according to a Christian theological doctrine, humanity's state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred...
," but rather from a preceding "Golden Age
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
" of innocence and simplicity. Time was generally regarded as the enemy of humanity which depreciates the value of the world. He credits the Epicureans
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
with having had a potential for leading to the foundation of a theory of Progress through their materialistic acceptance of the atomism
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
of Democritus
Democritus
Democritus was an Ancient Greek philosopher born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. He was an influential pre-Socratic philosopher and pupil of Leucippus, who formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos....
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
Robert Nisbet
Robert Alexander Nisbet was an American sociologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Vice-Chancellor at the University of California, Riverside and as the Albert Schweitzer Professor at Columbia University.-Life:Nisbet was born in Los Angeles in 1913 and raised in the small...
and Gertrude Himmelfarb
Gertrude Himmelfarb
Gertrude Himmelfarb , also known as Bea Kristol, is an American historian. She has written extensively on intellectual history, with a focus on Britain and the Victorian era, as well as on contemporary society and culture....
have attributed a notion of progress to other Greeks. Xenophanes
Xenophanes
of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes life was one of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 he continued to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Siciliy...
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
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
'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. The Roman philosopher Seneca
Seneca
-People:*Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Seneca the Younger aka Seneca , son of Seneca the Elder, Roman philosopher and playwright, tutor and advisor of Nero*Seneca the Elder , Roman orator and writer...
recognized the progress of knowledge, but he did not expect from it any improvement in the world, because any advance in the arts and inventions promotes deterioration by ministering to luxury and vice. Nisbet notes that the Christian idea of progress is a fusing of Greek and Jewish concepts and that "nothing in the entire history of the idea of progress is more important" than the Christian incorporation of Jewish millenarianism
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed, based on a one-thousand-year cycle. The term is more generically used to refer to any belief centered around 1000 year intervals...
, resulting in an understanding of time which is optimistic and progressive.,
Enlightenment
The scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries provided a basis for the optimistic outlook of Bacon's 'New Atlantis.' In the 17th century Bernard le Bovier de FontenelleBernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle , also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, was a French author.Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France and died in Paris just one month before his 100th birthday. His mother was the sister of great French dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille...
argued in favor of 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
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
provided further support and was popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a powerful influence on the American Founding Fathers.
In the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, French historian and philosopher Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
(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. 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 simply 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.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(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.
Scottish theorist Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson
Adam Ferguson FRSE, also known as Ferguson of Raith was a Scottish philosopher, social scientist and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment...
(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.
American Revolution
The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution—such as Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
, 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—for Americans and also, as Jefferson put it, for an "Empire of Liberty
Empire of Liberty
The Empire of Liberty is a theme developed first by Thomas Jefferson to identify America's world responsibility to spread freedom across the globe. Jefferson saw America's mission in terms of setting an example, expansion into the west, and by intervention abroad...
" that would benefit all mankind. Thus was born the idea of inevitable American future progress. What gave the American Revolution its widespread appeal and linked it to all subsequent political revolutions was its association with the Idea of Progress.
The most original 'New World' contribution to historical thought was the idea that history is not exhausted but that man may begin again in a new world. Besides rejecting the lessons of the past, the Jeffersonians Americanized the Idea of Progress by democratizing and vulgarizing it to include the welfare of the common man as a form of republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
. 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.'
That human liberty was put on the agenda of fundamental concerns of the modern world was recognized by the revolutionaries as well as by many British commentators. Yet, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution, the American Revolution had to share the spotlight with the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. The American Revolution was eclipsed, and, in the 20th century, lost its appeal even for subject peoples involved in similar movements for self-determination. Thus, its life as a model for political revolutions was relatively short. The reason for this development lies in the fact that its concerns and preoccupations were overwhelmingly political; economic demands and social unrest remained largely peripheral. After the middle of the 19th century, all political revolutions would ultimately have to involve themselves with social questions and become revolutions of modernization. But the American Colonies in the 1770s, in contrast to all other colonies, had been modern from the beginning. The American patriots were protecting the modernity and liberty they had already achieved, while later revolutions were fighting to obtain liberty for the first time. However, since so few modern revolutions have evinced much concern for the preservation and extension of human freedom, the American model may still come to provide a lesson for the future.
The notion that America is a highly favorable place for people seeking progress in their own lives comprises the American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
.
Modernization
"Modernity" or "modernization" was a key form of the Idea of progress as 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.John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
's (1806–73) ethical and political thought assumed a great 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 very Idea of Progress becomes questionable.
The influential English philosopher Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
(1820–1903) in The Principles of Sociology (1876) and The Principles of Ethics (1879) proclaimed a universal law of socio-political development: societies moved from a military organization to a base in industrial production. As society evolved, he argued, there would be greater individualism, greater altruism, greater co-operation, and a more equal freedom for everyone. The laws of human society would produce the changes, and he said the only role for government was military police, and enforcement of civil contracts in courts. Many libertarians adopted his perspective.
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 the increasing role 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.
Italy
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 new Kingdom of Italy, formed in 1861, worked to speed up the processes of modernization and industrialization that had begun in northern, but were slow to arrive in the Papal States in 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 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.Russia
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 transform backward Russia and to legitimize his monarchy (quite 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 intellectuals in Russia 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.Latin America
Juan Bautista AlberdiJuan Bautista Alberdi
Juan Bautista Alberdi was an Argentine political theorist and diplomat. Although he lived most of his life in exile in Montevideo and Chile, he was one of the most influential Argentine liberals of his age.-Biography:...
(1810–1884) was one of the most influential political theorists in Argentina. Economic liberalism which 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 transition in Argentina to true democracy.
In Mexico, Jose Mora (1795–1856) was a leader of classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
in the first generation after independence, leading the battle against the conservative trinity, 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 Constitution of 1857 and remains the basic aim of the Mexican government to this day.
China
Unlike Confucianism and to a certain extent Daoism, that both search for an ideal past, the Judeo-Christian 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. In the 20th century the KMT or Nationalist party, which ruled from the 1920s to the 1940s, advocated progress. The Communists under Mao ZedongMao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
rejected western models and their ruinous projects caused mass famines. After Mao's death, however, the new regime led by Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
(1904–97) and his successors aggressively promoted modernization of the economy using capitalist models and imported western technology.
Economic development
Alfred MarshallAlfred Marshall
Alfred Marshall was an Englishman and one of the most influential economists of his time. His book, Principles of Economics , was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years...
(1842–1924) was the most influential British economist of the early 20th century, and 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. After World War II, the modernization and development programs undertaken in the Third World were typically based on the Idea of Progress.
Status of women
How progress improved the degraded status of women in traditional society was a major theme of historians starting in the Enlightenment and continuing to today. British theorists William RobertsonWilliam Robertson (historian)
William Robertson FRSE FSA was a Scottish historian, minister of religion, and Principal of the University of Edinburgh...
(1721–93) and Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
(1729–97), along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
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 an enlightened affirmation of modern European civilization.
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. 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.
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.
Criticism
In the 19th century Romantic critics charged that progress did not automatically better the human condition, and indeed in some ways it may make it worse.Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
(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 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.
A fierce opponent of the Idea of Progress was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
(1844–1900), who became the prophet of decadence, scorning the 'weakling's doctrines of optimism,' and in his diagnoses of the times undermining the pillars of modernism, including faith in progress, to allow the strong individual to stand with his radical value system above the plebeian masses. An important part of his radically critical thinking consists of the attempt to use the classical model of 'eternal recurrence of the same' to dislodge the Idea of Progress.
A cyclical theory of history was adopted by Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
(1880–1936), a German historian who wrote a very influential pessimistic study of the end of progress called The Decline of the West (1920). The horrors of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
challenged the unblinking optimism of the modernizers. Clearly progress would not be automatic, and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century undercut the idea that technological improvement guaranteed democracy and moral advancement. Spengler was challenged by the optimism of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
(1889–1975), who felt that Christianity would help modern civilization overcome its challenges.
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, concludes:
- "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."
Myth of Progress
Some 20th century authors refer to the "Myth of Progress" to challenge the Idea of Progress, especially the assumption that the human condition will inevitably improve. In 1932 English physician Montague David EderMontague David Eder
Montague David Eder was a British psychoanalyst, physician, Zionist and writer. He was best known for advancing psychoanalytic studies in Great Britain.- Education and medical training :...
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." Eder argues that the advancement of civilization is leading to greater unhappiness and loss of control in the environment.
Sociologist P. A. Sorokin argued, "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."
Philosopher Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
emphasized the inadequacies of the Idea of Progress as a scientific explanation of social phenomena.
More recently, Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite
Neo-luddism
Neo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816...
author, wrote exclusively about progress as a myth, in an essay entitled "Five Facets of a Myth".
Iggers (1965) says the great failing of the prophets of progress was that they underestimated the extent of man's destructiveness and irrationality. The failing of the critics of the Idea of Progress, he adds, came in misunderstanding the role of rationality and morality in human behavior.
Environmentalism
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 environmentalismBright green environmentalism
Bright green environmentalism is an ideology based on the belief that the convergence of technological change and social innovation provides the most successful path to sustainable development.-Origin and evolution of bright green thinking:...
endorses the idea that new designs, social innovations and green technologies can solve critical environmental challenges. The other is pessimistic, warning of impending doom (through global warming, for example) and tends to reject the very idea of modernity and the myth of progress that is so central to modernization thinking. Similarly, Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale
Kirkpatrick Sale is an independent scholar and author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology...
, wrote about progress as a myth benefiting the few and pending environmental doomsday for everyone.
See also
- Progress (history)Progress (history)In historiography and the philosophy of history, progress is the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc...
- Social progressSocial progressSocial progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. This may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through social activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution...
- Scientific progressScientific progressScientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method.-Discontinuous Model of Scientific Progress:...
- Philosophical progress
- Modernization theoryModernization theoryModernization theory is a theory used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The theory looks at the internal factors of a country while assuming that, with assistance, "traditional" countries can be brought to development in the same manner more developed countries have...