Talk:Progress (history)

Progress in other cultures?

What about the idea of progress as seen outside the West? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.238.202 (talk) 15:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

What is the article about?

First, what is progress? I extrapolated a definition from vague ramblings in the text, but I am not an expert. What perspective does the article take -- a philosophical discussion about progress, or the history of the idea? Currently, it is written as the history. If it is meant to be about philosophy of the idea, more stuff as in the "20th century" section should be summarized as the current introduction. -Pgan002 09:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Mass merger proposal

I came onto the subject of Progress on wikipedia here via a cleanup of Progress (philosophy), and I have to say I find this whole corner of the wiki a mess. There appear to be four articles which, as far as I can tell, are largely discussing the same topic: Idea of Progress and Myth of Progress seem to be, essentially, POV forks, albiet without being actual forks of a single previous article; meanwhile, this article (Progress (history)) and Social progress appear to have no difference in scope at all.

All four of these articles are rather weak in their respective ways, and I think it would be best for all of them to merge their good-quality contents together into a single article. Furthermore, I believe that article would be best located at Progress simpliciter, and the article currently at that name moved to Progress (disambiguation) and linked from a hatnote on this page. Thoughts? --Pfhorrest (talk) 07:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Further thoughts:

• Idea of Progress and this article both share very similar chronological structures, so they should be easiest to merge.
• Idea of Progress has more and better material, but this article is the oldest, so I still say the material from there should be incorporated here, though the end result will look more like that than this.
• Myth of Progress should be easily incorporated with the Opposition section of Idea of Progress.
• Social progress is the only article that seems like it should be at all difficult to merge.

So if no one objects within a day or so, I think I will go ahead and merge Idea of Progress and Myth of Progress into this article, and do the moving of this article to Progress and the moving of what's currently there to Progress (disambiguation). --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

the merger ideas are good with one problem. Historians talk and write books and articles about the "Idea of progress", and include it in textbooks, which makes it the logical title and one that readers will search for. "Progress (history)" as a title is a poor jumble of words that no reader is likely to search for.Rjensen (talk) 19:50, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Unrelated to the debate about what title to use: I'm thinking more now that Social progress should not be included in this merger: while all notions of progress are in some way or another social, the subject of that article seems to be progress through different systems of social organization, e.g. different political, economic, and moral/ethical systems. In that sense, I think it is perhaps more akin to Scientific progress and Philosophical progress inasmuch as it is about progress in a particular field (broad as it may be), rather than about (the possibility/desirability/inevitability of) progress in a more abstract sense. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree re "Social Progress. I think "myth of progress" fits well in a merger because its supporters specifically deny the "idea of progress", arguing aginst the inevitability or desirability themes. Rjensen (talk) 01:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it's great that we organize all the articles about "Progress". It's not good for the encyclopedia to have a subject scattered in various entries without criteria. I support the inclusion of the criticism of the 18th century concept of progress in the criticism section of this article. However, this doesn't mean that we don't have enough sources to justify an entry that deals specifically with the expression "myth of progress". In keeping with this recent task of organizing the information on progress in the article, and in respect with the standards of Wikipedia, we would just need to put a "main" our "see also" template at the top of the criticism section in this article, directing to the article on the expression. There is nothing strange about having an article written about an expression, as long as backed by the proper sources (see Myth of the Flat Earth). If there are no objections, I will make the proper changes. Maziotis (talk) 21:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't object to there being a Myth of Progress article in principle, discussing just the use of that phrase, and hatnoted from the section here, IF there is enough material for such an article. Right now, it doesn't seem like there's enough to warrant that, though. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

We already have several books discussing the expression as a topic. If they cover more than the phrase's history, then we can certainly do more than writing about its "use". Exactly why do you feel that we can't have a main entry for "Myth of Progress" at the moment? It is my understanding that it is a real academic subject that is followed by several scholars, in different fields. I believe we already have the sources to satisfy wikipedia's policies for an article. Maziotis (talk) 02:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The article that was as Myth of Progress before was two unsourced mini-paragraphs for a lede and one well-sourced substantial paragraph, which is retained in the same-titled section of this article (Progress (history)#Myth of Progress). I think we should wait until there is more material than that before splitting it back off into its own article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree. We have more than enough books to establish notability, and we have better chances of developing the article if we create an entry. If you have problems with unsourced material, we can always delete that information and possibly be left with a stub. There is nothing wrong with that. We have millions of those in wikipedia. I can't see a single reason why you should or can stop someone from writing one about a topic for which there is so much material. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maziotis (talk • contribs) 12:08, January 24, 2010

Rename this article

I suggest we just rename this article Idea of Progress, which is what it is all about--that is the theory that progress will inevitably make the world better in every way (and its opponents). The current title is never used by anyone. The bibliography shows that scholars often write about the "idea of progress." The article on Progress is a disambig page that leads to many quite different topics, so it's not a good vehicle for this article.Rjensen (talk) 00:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "Progress (history)" is a weak title, which is why I was proposing it be moved to just "Progress" (and what's currently there to "Progress (disambiguation)". There would of course be redirects from "Idea of Progress" and such, for anyone searching for or linking to those titles.

The only reason I'm suggesting that this article (currently titled "Progress (history)") be the target of the merger is because it's the oldest and thus has the most history attached to it. I don't intent the title to stay around at all. --Pfhorrest (talk) 20:42, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I think "progress" is much too general--it gets 248 million google hits. The article is about how social thinkers think about progress. . Rjensen (talk) 21:27, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia tends to favor general titles for coverage of a general subject -- look at Rights, for example, an equally broad topic. One could equally write an article on the history of the concept of rights under the name "Idea of Rights" or some such, but it would be redundant with the article at titled just "Rights".

Besides, who else thinks about progress as a concept besides, as you say, "social thinkers"? There are articles on progress within a particular field (e.g. Scientific progress and Philosophical progress), and articles on unrelated things with "Progress" in their name, but there is no article on progress as a general concept or idea. We need one, and it is as far as I can tell an inherently social or historical idea, just as the idea of rights is an inherently political or ethical idea. If there are different approaches to the concept of progress -- e.g. if sociologists, anthropologists, historians, etc, each have their own different senses of "progress" -- then perhaps several more specific articles are warranted, with titles like the current title of this page. But even then, we still need something on the concept or idea of Progress in general, and it seems most sensible to me that it would be titled just "Progress". At an article "Idea of Progress" (capitalized as such), I would expect to find a history of the usage of that phrase in particular, which I'm not sure warrants an article of its own beyond an article on the concept the phrase refers to. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:36, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

the titles in the bibliography show that scholars deliberately use the term "idea of progress" indicating it is something people know they are trying to achieve (they have an idea) and with a strong suggestion of inevitibility that the much broader term "progress" lacks. The articles involved are all primarily about "the idea of progress" in this sense, and are not discussions of "progress." Rjensen (talk) 07:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

As I already stated, I'm not at all denying that the phrase "idea of progress" is significant in the literature. But I'm curious, to help clarify what your objection to using the title of just "Progress": what would you expect to find at an article with just that title (Progress), and how would it differ from the proposed article merging this (Progress (history)), Idea of Progress, Myth of Progress, and Social progress?

You say that the use of the phrase "idea of progress" indicates a desirability and perhaps inevitability associated with the concept of progress. As I said in my initial merge proposal, it seems rather like a POV fork to have one article on that attitude toward progress, and another (Myth of Progress) taking the opposite attitude, skeptical toward the desirability or inevitability of progress. For neutrality, both points of view should be included on a single article on the subject. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

An article that covered "progress" would include long sections telling what scholars have said about progress in science, mathematics, philosophy, art, music, literature, theater, religion, morality, sports, architecture, engineering, environmentalism, warfare, government, human rights, social welfare, inequality--etc etc--as well as sections explaining what "progress" meant in ancient Egypt, Israel, Rome and Greece, as well as the medieval world, China and India--and so on and on. The "myth of progress" literature is an attempt to refute the "idea of progress" and they belong together. Rjensen (talk) 01:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that an article that covered Progress in general would be suitable for all the types of content you list. However, we don't have material on all of that just yet: so if we were to have an article on just "Progress" in abstract, which I think we need, its contents would, for the moment, be almost completely redundant with what you propose should be listed as "Idea of Progress". If we had an article on "Progress" and it at some point grew too large to be a single article, then I would agree that it should be split off into smaller sub-articles, main'd from the article on just "Progress" (as Social progress, Scientific progress, and Philosophical progress are now).

What I'm not understanding is precisely what subset of the broad topic "Progress" is identified by the topic "Idea of Progress":

• Is it merely about the use of that particular phrase; as opposed the idea referred to by that phrase (namely, that of Progress)?
• Is it about positive or supportive attitudes toward the idea of Progress; as opposed to negative or skeptical attitudes toward the same?
• Is it about the concept of progress as conceived of by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Western scholars; as opposed to as conceived by scholars in other places and times?
• Is it about progress within some vaguely "social" domain, exclusive of "science, mathematics, philosophy, art, music, literature..." etc as you list; as opposed to progress as applicable to any domain?
• Or something else?

Thanks in advance for your clarification. --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Status of Women

the section "Status of Women" is currently placed as a subsection of "History" as an equal-level title along with historical periods like Antiquity, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. This seems poorly organized. I had integrated it into the Modernity section as the dates references in there fall within that period, but Rjensen has undone that change. Per WP:BRD I'm here to discuss. Please explain why this should be in its own section and not a part of the Modern history of progress? If nothing else, it certainly doesn't belong as a section alongside historical periods as it is now. --Pfhorrest (talk)

I suggest the "status of women" theme covers a lot of subfields--such as the status of women in China, in Europe, in the ancient world, etc.--historians do range pretty widely and the topic is not merely confined to the modern period.Rjensen (talk) 01:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, then maybe it should go alongside Economics et al as a section about progress in a particular area? It just seems odd to have "History: Antiquity, Enlightment, Modernity, Status of Women". One of these things is not like the others.... :-) --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

these are all fields of history and women's history is also a major field of history. The economics section probably should be retitled because it's not about the changes in economic theory, it's about economic historyRjensen (talk) 03:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sensing some confusion of scope and purpose here. As I see it, this entire article is about a sub-topic within the field of history: that of Progress. Then within the discussion of Progress, there is the sub-topic of the history of the idea or concept of Progress, i.e. what scholars have said over the years on the topic of "Progress", which is what the "History" section here is for, subdivided into historical eras. Then there are further sub-topics on what scholars have said on the topic of "Progress" with respect to various areas: how/whether there have been progressive changes in, e.g., social structures, scientific theories, philosophical theories, economic structures, etc, throughout history. I would think that the "Status of Women" section would belong best as one of those sections: it is about how/whether there has been progressive changes in the social status of women throughout history. (Though honestly, I think both it and the Economics section are properly subsets of Social progress and should be incorporated into that article, rather than here). --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

the article is not about progress at all. It is about a theory of how history operates as debated by historians. Rjensen (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Woman's history is a subfield of historiography and the article discusses how scholars have applied the Idea of Progress to the study of women. On economics, the issue is not whether economics as a discipline has made progress but how the topic of economic development became a special application of the Idea of Progress. The section on philosophy seems to be whether philosophers do a better job or worse than their predecessors. Rjensen (talk) 05:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

And the section on scientific progress is about whether modern scientific theories are any better or worse than older ones, yet you don't object to that. What's the difference between it and the section on philosophical progress? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the section on scientific progress should be dropped too. Rjensen (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Scope of this article

Ok, based on the new section lede of your (Rjensen)'s most recent edit, in the section now titled "Idea of Progress" I am getting the impression that what you mean by "Idea of Progress" might be something like "the theory that technological progress entails social progress", or put in more layman's terms, "the theory that improvements in technology necessarily imply improvements in society". Is that correct?

If so, it doesn't seem that all the material in the section now titled "Idea of Progress" (or in the old article of the same name) is solely about that theory. Much of it seems to be about progress in more general terms: for example, the section on the American revolution speaks entirely about how changes in social structures could or would improve society, which is about social progress in abstract, not about technological progress causing social progress. Likewise the section on Antiquity says nothing about technology improving society, but more about whether things are generally getting better or worse or moving in cycles, i.e. questions of progress in abstract, not this more particular "Idea of Progress" theory. Even in the section on Enlightment, only the first two paragraphs say anything about technology; the latter two are more about defining Progress in abstract, e.g. "Adam Ferguson defined human progress as the working out of a divine plan". The section "Modernization" is largely about technology improving society, except for the "Status of Women" subsection, which is just about improvement in women's social status over time (i.e. social progress for women), nothing about whether that has any relation to technology.

I suggest that we go through and separate the section I had titled "History" and you have titled "Idea of Progress" and split it into two sections; one on the history of scholarly writing on the general idea or concept of Progress (titled "History"), and one on the specific theory called the "Idea of Progress" (titled thus), into the latter of which "Criticism" would be subsumed as a subsection. If the latter of those is large enough, it may even warrant remaining its own separate article at Idea of Progress (which would be summarized and main'd from here). The purpose of my proposed merger to here was to consolidate material into an article on progress in general, not one on such a specific theory of how progress in one area related to progress in another; so if that is the intended scope of the article that was at Idea of Progress, perhaps the merger was not a good idea to begin with, though even if so I think it has been productive to the improvement of all the articles involved. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

the section on the Am Revolution tries to say that Enlightenment leaders (like Jefferson) believed that the Idea of Progress endorsed their political actions. The ancient history section is too brief, I agree, but it was supposed to link to the much-argued proposition that the history of the status of women validates the Idea of P. (says Leo Marx & Mazlish). Rjensen (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Another approach

The simplest approach is to move the sections on the Idea of Progress and Myth of Progress back to the "Idea of Progress" article. That will allow editors to ad d all they want here and rename it as they please. Rjensen (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Third opinion

Hey. I saw someone requested a third opinion for this page, so here it is. Titling an article "Idea of Progress" seems awkward to me, and is probably a violation of WP:NAME. I also think that it would be inappropriate to redirect this page to Progress and move Progress to its own disambiguation page, as this is just one definition of 'progress'. One alternative would be to move this to Historical progress or Human progress. One other thing you could do, and that would probably be best, would be to open it up for consensus by listing it at Wikipedia:Requested moves and get other people to comment on it. Thoughts? — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 06:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was reject. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Progress (history) → Progress — This article is about the main sense of "progress", and should be at that name; the disambiguation page currently at that name should be at Progress (disambiguation), which currently redirects to it. (The preceding is contentious; seeking outside input for consensus per 3O.) Pfhorrest (talk) 06:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the article is about a much narrower and more specific topic--the "idea of progress" which is a certain set of beliefs about the inevitability and desirability of progress in improving the human condition. The title "progress" is far too broad and mischaractrizes the actual contents. Name it "Idea of Progress" (the original name nbefore merger). Rjensen (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Opppose. There's no reason that this particular definition of 'progress' should take precedent over any other. — HelloAnnyong ^{(say whaaat?!)} 18:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment/Question Everything listed at Progress currently is either about a subset of progress in the sense intended for this article (the "history and society" section at the top), or about something which just happens to have the word "progress" in the name, with the sole exception perhaps of Evolutionary_progress. What other senses of "progress" are you worried about this displacing? --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose moving forward is not restricted to history, you could have progress in completing your dissertation, which is not linked to progress in standard of living. 76.66.192.206 (talk) 03:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Comment But we wouldn't have an encyclopedia article on "progress in dissertation writing". That even more general sense is covered by the wiktionary entry on "progress", which I have just linked to from this article.

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Outside commentators, please see the section titled Rename this article above for previous discussion on this subject. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Exponential Progress?

I was flipping through Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near the other day and thinking about its implications for progress as a historical idea. Kurzweil's book seems to be (one of several) logical evolutions of the ideal of progress discussed in this article. He holds many of the same tenets as the Enlightenment thinkers described within this article. However, he updates the ideal of progress by considering the implications of possible 21st century advances in technology. Are there any other thinkers and/or intellectual trends that might contribute to a sub-section (perhaps placed after the "Enlightenment" section in the chronological overview?) that details current manifestations of "progressive" thought?

Implications of Kurzweil's work for the ideal of progress and/or history: 1) Exponential, not linear progress 2) The end of history: when the Singularity occurs, the rate at which new events occur will outpace traditional methods of history, while the new man/machine intelligence will be able to comprehend all of history in a manner presently inconceivable.

Note that these are merely the ideas that I extrapolated from Kurzweil's book; maybe some one knows an article that has explored the topic already? This is probably a can of worms best not opened, but I was just going to throw it out there, in case there are any takers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Latvahat (talk • contribs) 02:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to me. I believe there are others besides Kurzweil who have written on that subject too, though I know he is an important figure there. Perhaps draw from resources cited by articles such as Techno-progressivism and Transhumanism to help build such a section. Please go right ahead :-) --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Always with the Greeks

Slightly tired of the Philhellenistic bias in, well, pretty much everything. Many Sumerian stories begin with the line like "Men used to eat grass with their mouths like sheep" for instance "How grain came to Sumer" http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.6# maybe this is worth mentioning. Moon Oracle (talk) 20:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Second merge proposal

See Talk:Social progress. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:50, 11 October 2016 (UTC)