Perspectives
Historian J. B. Bury wrote in 1920:
| “ | "To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence....It cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress..... The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith. | ” |
Sociologist Robert Nisbet finds that "No single idea has been more important than...the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years.", and defines five "crucial premises" of Idea of Progress:
- value of the past,
- nobility of Western civilization,
- worth of economic/technological growth,
- faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason,
- intrinsic importance and worth of life on earth.
Read more about this topic: Myth Of Progress