A Psychohistory of Metaphors by McVeigh Brian J.;

Author:McVeigh, Brian J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Early Notions of Progress

The idea that society is progressing can be traced back as far as the ancient Greeks. However, the idea of progress as something central to politico–economic theorizing, as well as evidence of how it has saliently impacted the average person’s worldview, are very different issues. In any case, examples of pre-Enlightenment thinkers who argued for what would later be called a “social evolutionist” view do exist. For example, the Valencian scholar and humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540) held an evolutionary theory, believing that language was necessary for the emergence of society which arose through cooperation from the need of subsistence. Jean Bodin (1530–96), important for his efforts in studying politics objectively, also believed in a type of social evolution. He postulated that human history passed through three periods: (1) religion; (2) warfare; and (3) inventive skill. Bodin also noted differences in cultures and examined the influence of the natural environment on social and political systems.

At about the same time, the publication of Sir Francis Bacon’s (1561–1626) The New Atlantis (1627) had a profound impact on eighteenth-century thinking about progress. This book, significant because it viewed knowledge in a radically new light, described a community on the imaginary island of Bensalem and its research institute called “Solomon’s House.” For Bacon, the purpose of accumulated knowledge was to increase human happiness. This is a decidedly modern idea, steeped in an interiorized view of the human condition that privileges emotional well-being, rather than a religious orientation that saw the primary purpose of life as spiritual salvation. We are moving closer to another major historical watershed: the establishment of government (or property management regimes) amenable to constant, future-oriented change so as to satisfy the interior life of the individual—“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Thanks to the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Bacon’s writings would go from the imaginary to the attainable, and as we enter the Enlightenment, arguments for social progress become more explicit. Bacon’s thinking influenced Denis Diderot (1713–84) and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83), who credit Bacon for inspiring their Encyclopedie (1751), a mammoth dictionary of the arts, sciences, trade, and manufacturing.

By the eighteenth century, the directionality of time had become a category of thought in its own right. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), besides the scientific and mathematical discoveries for which he is famous, accepted 4004 BC as the date of creation and wrote extensively on the relation between theology and temporality. Thinkers such as Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) made the idea of progress even more explicit in his Dialogues of the Dead (1683). Fontenelle was a philosopher of mathematics and science, and in Dialogues he described an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and Montaigne in which the latter is told by Socrates that history naturally progresses. Fontenelle’s Digression on the Ancients and Moderns (1688) articulated an even more explicit idea of progress that concerned the “querelle des anciens et des modernes” (“the debate of the Ancients and Moderns”). The latter had rebelled against the Renaissance (which had idealized the Greco–Roman classics) and positively accepted advancements in science.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.