Progress and its discontents, Part 1
the historically weird notion of progress
Sweeping away the established order: The March of the Intellect, cartoon, 1828
The great steps in
the human
experience
• opposable thumbs?
• fire?
• domestication of dogs (or
cats if you prefer)
• spirits and gods?
• agriculture?
• money?
• Newton’s laws of motion?
• antibiotics and vaccines?
• indoor plumbing?
• Wikipedia and control F?
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J. B. Bury’s two great steps
in the human experience
self-consciousness
the idea of progress
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The idea of progress
• human history has been a
rise from ignorance to
knowledge, primitive to
skilled, impoverished to
wealthy, savagery to
civilized behaviour, etc.
• human improvement is
- possible and perhaps even
inevitable
- enabled by applied
science, technology and
economics
• there are no serious limits
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Progress as a modern idea – a phenomenon of
the last few hundred years
Albert Rohida
• sedentary life: wealth as
wellbeing
• nature as resources: the world is
material; we are above it
• the world is knowable and
manipulable through applied
science and technology
• economic life organizes directing
material self-interest (or
collective material interest) as a
motivator for innovation and
advance
• ever improving industrial
production and distribution
provide more and more
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Before progress: hunting, gathering,
foraging
• nomadic life: wealth is a
burden
• life in nature: the world is alive;
we are part of it
• the world has mysteries and
surprises
• social life requires means of
ensuring cooperation and
avoiding or dealing with
conflict on the essentials
• what has worked in the past is
less risky than innovation
• 90 some percent of the human
experience
Inuit family travelling near Chesterfield Inlet
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Before progress: agriculture
Scene from the Tomb of Sennedjem and
Iyneferti, Wikimedia Commons, Public
Domain
• sedentary life
• potential for material
accumulation
• hierarchical social order
• customary places, roles,
practices
• reliance on the regularity of
rains, or annual floods, or dry
seasons
• chaos of war and invasion
• desire for stability
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Before progress: cyclical time
ancient Egypt:
• reviving Nile floods
• scarab (dung beetle)
as eternal renewal;
sun god Ra rolling
across the sky every
day
Mayans:
• death-rebirth symbols
• calendar cycles
India:
• Jain, Hindu &
Buddhist wheel of life
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Before progress: the glorious past
earlier different times, with
previous peoples/beings:
• maybe giants (Titans)
• maybe ideal (Golden
Age) or at least heroic
• maybe magical (elves,
unicorns)
• maybe innocent (Eden)
all better, or at least more
capable or more exciting,
than people and life in the
present
St. George and the Dragon, Rogier van
der Weyden, 1432
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Before progress: a world in decline
• in Europe, medieval view of
decline
- evidence of richer, more
sophisticated past (ruins)
- the architecture of the
past/plagues of the present
- assumed wisdom of the
ancients (Bible, Aristotle)
• focus on perfection of whole,
maintenance of hierarchy,
stability and balance
Pont du Gard aqueduct, Roman, ~50 AD, 17m
drop over 50km, no mortar, 20,000 m3/day,
operated without maintenance from 4th to 9th c
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Before progress: ambiguity about gains
• rise of selfconsciousness led to
banishment from Eden
• technological
innovations also
brought big losses
(Daedelus/Icarus)
• no anticipation of
material betterment
• change is risky
Peter Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1560?
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