Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the increasing positive liberty of society; it views it as primarily achievable through direct societal action, as in social enterprise or through activism, but being also through natural sociocultural evolution – that progressivism holds all human societies should strive towards.
The concept of progress was introduced in the early-19th-century social theories, especially social evolution as described by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It was present in the Enlightenment's philosophies of history. As a goal, social progress has been advocated by varying realms of political ideologies with different theories on how it is to be achieved.
Measuring progress Specific indicators for measuring progress can range from economic data, technical innovations, change in the political or legal system, and questions bearing on individual life chances, such as life expectancy and risk of disease and disability.
GDP growth has become a key orientation for politics and is often taken as a key figure to evaluate a politician's performance. However, GDP has a number of known flaws that make it an imperfect measure of progress, especially for developed countries. For example, environmental damage is not taken into account, and neither is the sustainability of economic activity. Wikiprogress had been set up to share information on evaluating societal progress. Its aim was to facilitate the exchange of ideas, initiatives and knowledge. HumanProgress.org is another online resource that seeks to compile data on different measures of societal progress.
Our World in Data is a scientific online publication, based at the University of Oxford, that studies how to make progress against large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. The mission of Our World in Data is to present "research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems".
The Social Progress Index is a tool developed by the International Organization Imperative Social Progress, which measures the extent to which countries cover the social and environmental needs of its citizenry from a progressive philosophical perspective. There are fifty-two indicators in three areas or dimensions: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunities.
Indices that can be used to measure progress include:
Broad measures of economic progress Disability-adjusted life year Green national product Gender-related Development Index Genuine Progress Indicator Gross National Happiness Gross National Well-being Happy Planet Index Human Development Index Legatum Prosperity Index Median income Social Progress Index OECD Better Life Index Subjective life satisfaction Where-to-be-born Index Wikiprogress World Happiness Report World Values Survey
Scientific progress
Scientific progress is the idea that the scientific community learns more over time, which causes a body of scientific knowledge to accumulate: the chemists in the 19th century knew less about chemistry than the chemists in the 20th century, and they in turn knew less than the chemists in the 21st century. Looking forward, today's chemists reasonably expect that chemists in future centuries will know more than they do.
From the 18th century through late 20th century, the history of science, especially of the physical and biological sciences, was often presented as a progressive accumulation of knowledge, in which true theories replaced false beliefs. Some more recent historical interpretations, such as those of Thomas Kuhn, tend to portray the history of science in terms of competing paradigms or conceptual systems in a wider matrix of intellectual, cultural, economic and political trends. These interpretations, however, have met with opposition for they also portray the history of science as an incoherent system of incommensurable paradigms, not leading to any scientific progress, but only to the illusion of progress.Kuhn, T., 1962, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", University of Chicago Press, p. 137: "Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly presented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method made seem scientific."
Whether other intellectual disciplines make progress in the same way as the sciences is a matter of debate. For example, one might expect that today's historians know more about global history than their ancient counterparts (consider the histories of Herodotus). Yet, knowledge can be lost through the passage of time, or the criteria for evaluating what is worth knowing can change. Similarly, there is considerable disagreement over whether fields such as philosophy make progress - or even whether they aim at accumulating knowledge in the same way as the sciences.For example, see Chalmers, David (2015) Why isn't there more progress in philosophy? Philosophy 90 (1):3-31: https://philpapers.org/rec/CHAWIT-15 or Ross, Lewis (2021), How Intellectual Communities Progress, Volume 18, Issue 4 pp. 738 - 756: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2020.2
Social progress
Aspects of social progress, as described by Condorcet, have included the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of inequalities between the sexes, reforms of harsh prisons and the decline of poverty.Nisbet, Robert (1980). History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books Ch. 5 The social progress of a society can be measured based on factors such as its ability to address fundamental human needs, help citizens improve their quality of life, and provide opportunities for citizens to succeed.
Social progress is often improved by increases in GDP, although other factors are also relevant. An imbalance between economic and social progress hinders further economic progress, and can lead to political instability. Where there is an imbalance between economic growth and social progress, political instability and unrest often arise. Lagging social progress also holds back economic growth in these and other countries that fail to address human needs, build social capital, and create opportunity for their citizens.
Status of women How progress improved the status of women in traditional society was a major theme of historians starting in the Enlightenment and continuing to today.Allen, Ann Taylor (1999). "Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: the Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860–914," American Historical Review 104 (4): 1085–113; Nyland, Chris (1993). "Adam Smith, Stage Theory, and the Status of Women," History of Political Economy 25 (4): 617–40. British theorists William Robertson (1721–1793) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797), along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based conceptions of virtue, while working within a new Enlightenment paradigm. The political agenda related beauty, taste, and morality to the imperatives and needs of modern societies of a high level of sophistication and differentiation. Two themes in the work of Robertson and Burke—the nature of women in 'savage' and 'civilized' societies and 'beauty in distress'—reveals how long-held convictions about the character of women, especially with regard to their capacity and right to appear in the public domain, were modified and adjusted to the idea of progress and became central to modern European civilization.Kontler, László (2004). "Beauty or Beast, or Monstrous Regiments? Robertson and Burke on Women and the Public Scene," Modern Intellectual History 1 (3): 305–30.
Classics experts have examined the status of women in the ancient world, concluding that in the Roman Empire, with its superior social organization, internal peace, and rule of law, allowed women to enjoy a somewhat better standing than in ancient Greece, where women were distinctly inferior.Dimand, Robert William, & Chris Nyland (2003). The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought. Edward Elgar Publishing, p. 109; Ryrie, Charles Caldwell (1958). The Place of Women in the Church, The Macmillan Company, Ch 1. The inferior status of women in traditional China has raised the issue of whether the idea of progress requires a thoroughgoing rejection of traditionalism—a belief held by many Chinese reformers in the early 20th century.Vernoff, Edward, & Peter J. Seybolt, (2007). Through Chinese Eyes: Tradition, Revolution, and Transformation, APEX Press, pp. 45ff.
Historians Leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish asking, "should we in fact abandon the idea of progress as a view of the past," answer that there is no doubt "that the status of women has improved markedly" in cultures that have adopted the Enlightenment idea of progress.Marx, Leo, & Bruce Mazlish (1998). Progress: Fact or Illusion?. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, p. 5.
Modernization
Modernization was promoted by classical liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries, who called for the rapid modernization of the economy and society to remove the traditional hindrances to free markets and free movements of people.Appleby, Joyce; Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob (1995). Telling the Truth about History. W.W. Norton, p. 78. During the Enlightenment in Europe social commentators and philosophers began to realize that people themselves could change society and change their way of life. Instead of being made completely by gods, there was increasing room for the idea that people themselves made their own society—and not only that, as Giambattista Vico argued, because people made their own society, they could also fully comprehend it. This gave rise to new sciences, or proto-sciences, which claimed to provide new scientific knowledge about what society was like, and how one might change it for the better.The following annotated reference list appears in J. B. Bury's study: The Idea of Progress, published in 1920 and available in full on the web:
In turn, this gave rise to progressive opinion, in contrast with conservational opinion. The social conservationists were skeptical about panaceas for social ills. According to conservatives, attempts to radically remake society normally make things worse. Edmund Burke was the leading exponent of this, although later-day liberals like Friedrich Hayek have espoused similar views. They argue that society changes organically and naturally, and that grand plans for the remaking of society, like the French Revolution, National Socialism and Communism hurt society by removing the traditional constraints on the exercise of power.
The scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries provided a basis for Francis Bacon's book the New Atlantis. In the 17th century, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle described progress with respect to arts and the sciences, saying that each age has the advantage of not having to rediscover what was accomplished in preceding ages. The epistemology of John Locke provided further support and was popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a powerful influence on the American Founding Fathers. The first complete statement of progress is that of Turgot, in his "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" (1750). For Turgot, progress covers not only the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culture—manner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, and society. Condorcet predicted the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of inequalities between the sexes, reforms of harsh prisons and the decline of poverty.