Progress is simply a precursor to, possibly adjacent a prerequisite for, optimism. Not the intelligence optimism of cheery moods, but the technological optimism that is the main taxable of this book. Psychological optimism, arsenic I person suggested, is much similar resignation—making the champion of what you have, uncovering metallic linings. Scientific optimism is forward-looking, adjacent obsessed with a aboriginal of possibilities.
Progress, too, is future-oriented. While that whitethorn dependable trivial to modern ears—of course, advancement requires a future—it has not ever been so. Even today, advancement is simply a arguable subject. We’re each rather blessed to person anesthesia. Less blessed for definite astir The Bomb. Both are the effect of technological progress.
How bash we parse this and galore different examples of technologies that are utilized for bully oregon ill, oregon galore times both? Scientific advancement is littered with genies we mightiness alternatively not person fto retired of the bottle. Nonetheless, I deliberation that astir radical would hold that the benefits are undeniable and, by astir measures, outweigh the harms. Arguments implicit advancement capable books and journals and podcasts and galore different media, astir of which trust themselves connected immoderate technological progress. Progress is simply a fraught subject.
Let america effort avoiding this analyzable morass by separating the idea of advancement from the products of progress. This is not conscionable a semantic trick, but a mode to spot aspects of advancement that person shaped quality nine and attitudes, nary substance however you consciousness astir the peculiar results of that progress. It’s not that I deliberation discussions astir the values of advancement are not important, but for our purposes here, it is not immoderate peculiar advancement that matters. It is the idea of advancement and having that thought arsenic a regular portion of our intelligence lives—as a shared outlook, arsenic an expectation, arsenic commonplace—that person truthful radically changed america and our societal constitution successful the past fewer centuries.
This idea of advancement is thing that gets overmuch little attraction than the products and values of progress, possibly due to the fact that it has go truthful habitual successful our reasoning that we are each definite we cognize what it means. Not so. There are galore layers of meaning and galore aspects to the conception that are worthy examining, particularly successful airy of our attempts to redefine optimism, which depends successful galore ways, and successful galore not-so-obvious ways, connected the thought of progress. So, let’s complicate the idea of progress. That volition necessitate america to fto spell of immoderate acquainted associations attached to the connection and see immoderate possibly unexpected ones.
First, we should disabuse ourselves of the conception that advancement arsenic an thought is thing innate to quality beings, that it has been astir since radical were coating pictures connected cave walls. There is nary beardown grounds that Paleolithic cave artists were expressing an explicit optimism for the aboriginal successful the mode we deliberation of that sentiment today. Most scholars construe aboriginal cave creation arsenic tied to contiguous concerns—rituals, communication, oregon sympathetic magic—rather than a conscious projection of anticipation into an abstract future. There is simply a deficiency of explicit advancement iconography—of a past oregon present, a earlier and after, oregon a alteration implicit time. Indeed, the paintings whitethorn conscionable arsenic easy person been a depiction of a precocious palmy hunt, with nary thought of the future.
Several things are required for an thought specified arsenic advancement to summation a footing, and it was not until the Scientific Revolution that each of those were met. This is not to accidental that immoderate conception of alteration did not beryllium earlier the precocious sixteenth century, but with precise fewer exceptions, it seems that alteration was either not highly regarded oregon simply occurred truthful dilatory arsenic to spell mostly unnoticed.
It whitethorn look remarkable, but the Athenian Greeks, truthful admired for providing the foundations of doctrine and antiauthoritarian ideals of governance and adjacent an aboriginal devotion to thing we could benignant of telephone science, had nary azygous connection for progress. There were words that could loosely beryllium translated arsenic advancement but they were much similar “change” oregon “increase” oregon immoderate vague spot that we mightiness present subordinate with progress. To the grade that advancement was considered, it was typically thought to beryllium undesirable. Progress and the alteration associated with it were a root of dissolution and decay, a further nonaccomplishment of the innocence of the Golden Age of the ancestors. They were the other of stableness and dependability. Consider the mythic fates of Icarus, Prometheus, Hercules—all were punished alternatively severely for trying to grow knowledge, to marque progress.
It’s not that determination was nary progress, but that wrong a azygous generation, truthful small changed arsenic to beryllium imperceptible.
The Platonic perfect of transcendent forms that beryllium successful eternity is different artifact to progress, because, strictly speaking, determination is nary unfastened aboriginal and nary specified happening arsenic invention. As E.R. Dodds enactment it successful his celebrated essay, “The Ancient Concept of Progress,” “What the ancients telephone invention is but recollection of a world which is already there—nothing wholly caller tin ever travel into being.” There is thing caller nether the sun, lone possibly approaches to much cleanable versions that already beryllium successful immoderate transcendent place.
Yes, the Greeks made singular advances successful mathematics, but mostly successful geometry, which is astir solid, unchangeable objects and uses a strict hierarchy of axioms, rules, and procedures—very Platonic. I uncertainty the Greeks could person imagined calculus, the mathematics of change. Indeed, nary 1 would until astir 2 1000 years aft Euclid. What advancement was made successful immoderate technological areas—navigation, shipbuilding—was seen arsenic the pinnacle of achievement. There was small information to spell further.
There were exceptions, but they were outliers. Archimedes wrote, “I apprehend that immoderate either of my contemporaries oregon of my successors volition beryllium enabled to observe different theorems successful addition, which person not arsenic yet occurred to me.” In the 2nd period BCE, the astronomer Hipparchus compiled a database of the fixed stars truthful that aboriginal astronomers mightiness comparison his observations to their ain and observe what mightiness person changed.
But these ideas, it seems, did not percolate into the nine of philosophers, politicians, and the mean man, and were not taken up by the Roman civilization that supplanted the Athenian and Alexandrian Greeks. Roman subject consisted chiefly of improving technologies successful civilian engineering (water and roadworthy systems) and warfare, compiling aesculapian knowledge, and processing tools for specialized uses. There was small of find and involvement beyond this benignant of exertion development.
Progress fared lone somewhat amended successful the agelong play from the autumn of Rome (c. 475 CE) to the Renaissance (in the fourteenth century)—one 1000 years during which alteration was truthful dilatory that for astir forty generations, astir radical saw small oregon nary alteration successful exertion during their lifetimes (except possibly successful warfare). You would apt bash what your parents did and your children would bash arsenic you did. Options were limited. It’s not that determination was nary progress, but that wrong a azygous generation, truthful small changed arsenic to beryllium imperceptible.
Think of the stirrup, sometimes credited arsenic being 1 of the 3 astir important inventions successful the people of history. (The plow and gunpowder are the different two, oregon the printing press, depending connected your perspective.) The stirrup astir apt originated successful the Far East successful the archetypal period CE and was introduced successful Europe astir the seventh century. It remained of captious value from past until astir 1 100 years ago, erstwhile horsemanship rather abruptly was nary longer a required skill. That’s thirteen 100 years of the aforesaid idiosyncratic proscription technology. Julius Caesar and Thomas Jefferson some traveled astir their lands by horse.
Robert Merton, the renowned sociologist of science, has made the lawsuit that successful spite of the occasional agleam prima oregon beacon of find successful the earlier periods (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon), they were not capable to enactment a technological infrastructure, oregon the societal requirements of a technological community. To stay viable, subject indispensable beryllium wide and continuous, capable to dispersed and link with different ideas and different minds.
The Renaissance brings a spark of beingness to much worldly intelligence pursuits, and the precise beginnings of subject tin beryllium seen toward the extremity of that play and the commencement of what whitethorn beryllium termed the aboriginal modern play (the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries). The Renaissance, arsenic the sanction implies, was a rebirth of involvement successful classical (i.e., Greek and Roman) culture, and truthful was a look backmost arsenic overmuch arsenic forward. Nonetheless, the Renaissance provided a benignant of onramp to the Scientific Revolution and the overmuch speedier gait of advancement associated with it.
This faster gait was a cardinal constituent that allowed advancement to go an idea, a viewpoint, a intelligence and societal state. For that to happen, advancement indispensable beryllium experienced wrong a generation, wrong a azygous lifetime. That means it indispensable beryllium rapid. I would spell a measurement further and suggest that for the thought of advancement to go manifest, it indispensable not lone beryllium rapid, but it indispensable besides accelerate. It is not capable for advancement to beryllium fast; the precise complaint of advancement indispensable increase. Then, and lone then, volition the idea, arsenic overmuch arsenic its products, instrumentality clasp of a society. It is simply a benignant of cognitive bias that results from the mode our sensory systems interact with the satellite that we are much alert of acceleration than of speed. Like flying successful a plane, you don’t truly announcement the velocity erstwhile it is constant, lone erstwhile determination is acceleration.
Time was frankincense malleable and precise local.
Four captious prerequisites are indispensable for the idea of advancement to make and go a driving unit successful society. Each of these arose separately implicit the people of clip from Athenian Greece, but they came unneurotic successful the Scientific Revolution and its contiguous aftermath. They are what produced the thought of progress.
First is simply a modulation from a circular to a linear presumption of clip and history. Circular philosophies of recurrence, communal successful galore cultures and spiritual systems, are not arsenic susceptible to progress, since they conceive of the satellite arsenic repeating past successful an endless cycle. For the Greeks, the ellipse was the cleanable signifier due to the fact that this reflected their worldview of recurrence. Most past calendars are successful the signifier of a circle, based connected recurring astronomical events and repeating seasons.
Even today, astrological calendars supposedly reflecting past views put the zodiacal months successful a circle. The linear calendar we unrecorded and enactment with present is efficaciously infinite; you conscionable support adding days. (On the Calendar app provided with my Apple computer, I was capable to scroll 1 100 years into the aboriginal to 2125, and determination seemed to beryllium nary extremity successful sight.) This calendar takes for granted that clip volition proceed without extremity and truthful that unending advancement is besides possible. Although the abbreviated biblical past and prophecy of a coming apocalypse truncate the literal spiritual timescale, it was the Judeo-Christian adoption of a linear calendar that provided, if unintentionally, the crushed for an open-ended presumption of continued progress. As J. B. Bury enactment it successful his publication The Idea of Progress, “You person not got the thought of advancement until you spell connected to conceive that it is destined to beforehand indefinitely into the future.”
A sizeable assemblage of assistance exists connected the displacement from circular to linear clip and its effects connected philosophy, society, and culture. Much of it is besides wrapped up successful the invention of mechanical clocks, successful peculiar the mechanical clocks of medieval Europe. that progressed indefinitely—the second, the minute, and the hour. Today, we reason astir the merits of daylight redeeming time, but until the advent of clocks, hours were simply divided into adjacent portions of time and night. During the summer, daytime hours were longer—twelve of them needed to screen the day. Likewise, nighttime hours were shorter since determination had to beryllium 12 of them packed into the shorter night. In the winter, this was reversed. Time was frankincense malleable and precise local.
Keeping clip successful changeless units allowed advances successful navigation and successful connection and collaboration implicit distances—time units were present the aforesaid everywhere. Time could beryllium parceled into measurable packets, but it was besides continuous and unending. There was present a chiseled past, present, and future. Calendars possessed an infinite timeline. Once a aboriginal existed, determination could beryllium progress.
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Excerpted from It Could Be Otherwise: Science successful the Age of Uncertainty by Stuart Firestein. © 2026 by Stuart Firestein. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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