This document discusses different views of progress throughout history. It begins by describing how early societies viewed progress as either a decline from a past golden age or a path towards salvation. It then discusses Eastern religious views that see the human world as an illusion. It describes the concept of eternal cycles of rise and fall. The document then outlines different perspectives on progress, including the idea that technological and scientific advances drive moral and physical improvements for humanity. It also discusses critiques of the idea of inevitable progress and debates around the relationship between evolution and progress.

2. We see societies establishing themselves, nations forming
themselves, which in turn dominate other nations or become
subject to them. Empires rise and fall; laws, forms of
government, one succeeding another; the arts, the sciences, are
discovered and cultivated; sometimes retarded and sometimes
accelerated in their progress, they pass from one region to
another. Self-interest, ambition, vainglory, perpetually change
the scene of the world, inundate the earth with blood. Yet in the
midst of their ravages manners are gradually softened, the
human mind takes enlightenment, separate nations draw nearer
to each other, commerce and policy connect at last all parts of
the globe, and the total mass of the human race, by the
alternation of calm and agitation, of good conditions and of bad,
marches always, although slowly, towards still higher
perfection.
— Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, “On the Successive Advances of the Human Mind” (1750)
“Still Higher Perfection”

3. We shall find in the experience of the past, in
the observation of the progress that the
sciences and civilization have already made, in
the analysis of the progress of the human mind
and of the development of its faculties, the
strongest reasons for believing that nature has
set no limit to the realization of our hopes.
— Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human
Mind (1794)
“No Limit”

4. Progress is the application of
technology for the moral and physical
improvement of the human race.
— 1855 Exposition Universelle Livre d’Or
[Note: in this context, moral refers to the prevention or cure of human suffering]

5. The idea of Progress means that
civilisation has moved, is moving, and
will move in a desirable direction.
— J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (1920)

6. "No single idea has been more important than the Idea of Progress in Western
civilization for three thousand years."
-- Robert Nisbet (History of the Idea of Progress, 1980)
Nisbet’s “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
“Value, Nobility, Worth, Faith, Importance”
“La Science,” by Jules Blanchard

7. Views of Human Culture
I. Decline from a Golden Age
II. Salvation and the End of History
III. The Illusion of the Real
IV. Endless Cycles
V. Progress

8. I. Gold to Iron

9. The Christian Version: Fall from Grace
Fernand Cormon, “The Flight of Cain”
After the expulsion from Eden, Adam and Eve and their children experience hunger, treachery, and death

10. II. Salvation and the End of History
Christ presides over the Last Judgment:
The dead rise from their graves.
Some souls are saved; others are led off to Hell

11. Michelangelo, “The Last Judgment”

12. III. The Illusion of the Real
Woodcut by Camille Flammarion, 1888

13. Buddhism: All things perceived by the senses —
including humanity — are transient and composed of
nothing (sunyata). Only eternal law (dharma) is truly real
Hinduism: All names, all forms, all history is Maya:
illusion
Platonism: the world we perceive is like the shadows on a
wall — fleeting and unsubstantial projections of the truly
real and eternal forms of the world of ideas
Human History Is Illusion

14. IV. Eternal Cycles
“Time is infinite, but the things in time, the concrete bodies, are finite. They may
indeed disperse into the smallest particles; but these particles, the atoms, have their
determinate numbers, and the numbers of the configurations which, all of themselves,
are formed out of them is also determinate. Now, however long a time may pass,
according to the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal play of
repetition, all configurations which have previously existed on this earth must yet
meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and corrupt each other again.”
— Heinrich Heine
* * *
“The law of conservation of energy demands eternal recurrence.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

15. Zodiac Wheel of Recurrence

16. V. Progress
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number Virtuoso control over inanimate forms of energy

17. Essayist de Vogué answers critics of the Eiffel Tower
The Nineteenth Century Embodiment of Progress

18. The Miraculous Power of Technological Progress
Thomas Edison and his Phonograph

19. Prime Exemplars of Progress by the Control of Energy
Nineteenth Century Twentieth Century

20. Stanley Kubrick’s Vision of Progress in 2001: A Space Odyssey

21. Hans Rosling on Human Progress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

22. “As natural selection works solely by and for the good if each being, all corporeal and mental
endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.” — Charles Darwin
“Darwinian evolution is fundamentally progressive if progress is simply defined as an increase,
not in complexity, intelligence or some other anthropocentric value, but in the accumulating
number of features contributing towards whatever adaptation the lineage in question exemplifies.
— Richard Dawkins
A Contrary View
“There is no progress in evolution. The fact of evolutionary change through time doesn't represent progress as we know it…. History includes too much
chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based
on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points. And history includes too much contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of
unpredictable antecedent states, rather than immediate determination by timeless laws of nature. Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a
geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans
arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on
an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.” — Steven Jay Gould
Progress and Evolution

23. Negative Views on Progress
Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. — G.K. Chesterton
The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken
comfort for civilization. — Benjamin Disraeli
Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not
get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in
that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. — C.S. Lewis
Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. — George Orwell
“Two centuries ago, when the best minds of European society undertook to replace myth with history, they saw that exchange as
the precondition of limitless secular progress. . Today, Progress is seen by intellectuals as a myth in the most pejorative sense of
the word -- a pipe dream -- which proves that history devoid of myth can only dissolve human experience into a relativistic fog in
which the mind finds no universal meaning, unless it is the lesson of world-weary resignation.” — Theodore Roszak

24. “Last week, the White House released the National Climate
Assessment, and the news is grim. Coral reefs are dying,
shellfish will increasingly make us sick, and cherries are
being decimated by weather extremes. Along the Eastern
Seaboard, waters will rise up to four feet—perhaps six feet—
by the end of the century, making Sandy-like storm surges a
frequent event. California will continue to burn. Arizona will
continue to burn.” The New Yorker, May 14, 2014
Technical “Progress” Leads to Doom

25. More ideas about PROGRESS
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study
mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to
give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. -- John Adams
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Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first. — F. W. Dupee
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Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show
you a failure. — Thomas Edison
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Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of mankind. — L. Ron Hubbard
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Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the
compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job. — Victor Hugo
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In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty
to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: “dentistry.” — P.J. O’Rourke
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