Human progress

I am beginning to think that there is a "progress" gene in the human physical makeup, a factor that propels humans to move beyond their immediate environment. Lower animals may roam, but they seem to have a genetically limited environment in which to do so. The original sense in English of "progress" was spatial, as in moving from one place to another. An early use was "a royal progress." Or one progressed from point A to point B. Such has been the history of homo sapiens, one of movement and expansion across the earth. This sense of progress was "neutral," without the present-day connotation of improvement in time. The development of the the latter sense indicates a transformation in world view and of our power to harness nature for the benefit of humans. Yet the two are intertwined: since the dispersal of homo sapiens from their original habitat in Africa about 60,000 years ago, they have not only progressed across the earth but also continually increased their knowledge of the workings of nature and applied the resulting technology so that each succeeding generation, especially in the past three centuries, has a better standard of living than the previous one. Thus, we now have the "ideology of progress."

The transition in meaning occurred incrementally in the 18th century. Reinhart Koselleck, in his article on progress in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, notes that the "denaturalization" of "progress" often appeared in the context of  "history," which was no longer regarded as cyclical (as with the ancients) or as one darn thing after another. The process of progress and of history began to be seen as having a dynamic character.

One of the earliest studies of the subject (often footnoted by Koselleck) is that of John Bury, The Idea of Progress: an Inquiry into Its Origins and Growth. Bury links the idea of progress to "an interpretation of history which regards men as slowly advancing in a definite and desirable direction, and infers that this progress will continue indefinitely." Although one may look at the records of the past and see that civilization has gradually advanced, "you have not got the idea of Progress until you go on to conceive that it is destined to advance indefinitely in the future." In his view "the intellectual climates of classical antiquity and the ensuing ages were not propitious to the birth of the doctrine of Progress."

Ludwig Edelstein, in The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity, takes issue with Bury and seeks to prove that pre-Socratic and classical thinkers did have a notion of progress. By his own examples, however, it is clear that not a single thinker devoted a complete work to the subject. It is true that the ancients (whom Francis Bacon instead called "the youth" of the world) were aware that things got better with time, especially in the arts and sciences and perhaps even in manners and mores. The Greeks in particular felt themselves superior to non-Greeks, who, in their view, had not advanced to their own civilized status, but did any of them believe that humanity itself could be progressed, especially in morals? Perhaps the right political order would correct the shortcomings of humans and create a better organization of society, but only Sparta seems to have put such an order into practice.

Homo sapiens (click to enlarge)

For Koselleck, Bury, and Edelstein, progress is an idea, and, as Bury writes, "When we say that ideas rule the world, or exercise a decisive power in history, we are generally thinking of those ideas which express human aims and depend for their realisation on the human will, such as liberty, toleration, equality of opportunity, socialism." Such ideas, as he continues, "are approved or condemned because they are held to be good or bad, not because they are true or false." What is missing in the study by Bury, however, and also in Koselleck and Edelstein, is attention to the conditions that made progress dynamic, that gave birth to the idea that history could be channeled into a desireable direction with benefits to all of humanity. As Bury writes, it was only in the 16th century that obstacles to progress appeared to be transcended and "a favorable atmosphere" began to be prepared. But what exactly happened in the 16th century that produced "an atmosphere" favorable to progress? All of these works are heavy on ideas, less so on the effect of material changes.

It was in the 16th century that Europeans, after the initial discovery, began to exploit the New World. This exploration led to a number of inventions and improvements in already existing technologies, and also to increasing wealth for the European nations. Competition for the seas and for the wealth of overseas territories also led to wars but also to the first international "instruments" for regulating commerce and ownership. By the 19th century, the citizens of France, Germany, Britain, the United States, Holland, and Denmark were aware that they lived better than their ancestors. They could also imagine that their descendents would do even better.  For wealth to increase, of course, ships had to be sent all over the world. It required new products to be manufactured for people to buy, and new tools invented for mastering the natural world. The engine of industrial growth had to progress if Europe and its offshoots were to progress in their standard of living.

Could ancient hedonists ever imagine people could live like this?

We moderns lived in a different world from that of the ancients. The Greeks may have felt superior vis a vis their barbarian neighbors, but they were also aware of how difficult was the task of creating civilization. Thus, they did not take it for granted that their accomplishments would outlast their lifetime, certainly not into the far future. The surplus and affluence of the modern world are such that we can hardly imagine that life could be otherwise. Progress seems natural to us. But our present affluence is the work of past generations.

Picture credit: Reproductive Revolution; Psychic Tourism