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TH E IDEA O F
PROGRESS
The Idea of Progress
Edited by
Arnold Burgen
Peter McLaughlin
Jurgen MittelstraB
w
DE
G
Walter de Gruyter •Berlin •New York
1997
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
o f the ANSI to ensure pcrmanence and durability
Printed in Germany
Typesetting: Converted by Knipp Satz und Bild digital, Dortmund
Printing: Ratzlow Druck, Berlin
Binding: Liideritz & Bauer, Berlin
Cover design: Rudolf Hiiblcr, Berlin
Contents
Acknowledgements V
Introduction IX
Walter Burkert
Impact and Limits of the Idea of Progress in Antiquity 19
Shigeru Nakayama
Chinese “Cyclic” View of History vs. Japanese “Progress” 65
Jean Blondel
Political Progress: Reality or Illusion? 77
Nicholas Rescher
Progress and the Future 103
R udolf Flotzinger
Progress and Development in Music History 121
Dag Prawitz
Progress in Philosophy 139
John D . Barrow
Time in the Universe 155
A ntonio G arcia-Bellido
Progress in Biological Evolution 175
Gereon Wolters
The Idea of Progress in Evolutionary Biology:
Philosophical Considerations 201
Philippe Lazar
The Idea of Progress in Human Health 219
Index 237
Introduction
Co .1
pendent of its historical significance, the concept of progress
now even more so presents an important theme of philosophi
cal and scientific reflection.
The contributions to this volume have been revised and
reworked from lectures given at a conference on the “Idea of
Progress” organized by the editors and sponsored by the
Academia Europaea. At this conference the idea of progress
was approached from a number of different perspectives and
on a number of different dimensions: the empirical registering
of change and the normative evaluation of such change as bet
terment; the view backwards at the past and forward into the
future, that is, the progress we think we have already made and
the progress we may still want to make; the study of the gen
eral, e.g., of recurrent or cyclical processes, and of the particu
lar, e.g., the unique course of history. The areas considered
ranged from physics to musicology, from public health to cul
tural self-understandings, from what philosophy says about
progress to progress in philosophy itself.
The diversity of national and disciplinary background of the
contributors to this volume produces a number of interesting
intersections of disciplines and opinions. Both Blondel in poli
tics and Garcfa-Bellido in the organic world pursue the ques
tion of whether there can be objective criteria of progress -
either as efficiency of political structures or complexity of bio
logical organization. Barrow takes up, on the example of time,
the problem of registering change itself, since this presupposes
some nonchanging background against which the change is
measured. Rescher points to the problematic relation between
progress in knowledge and accordingly in ability to control
the future and the importance of impredictability for a moral
and happy life, and Lazar analyzes and illustrates such prob
lems with examples from medicine and from science as applied
to medicine. Nakayama points out that there are differences
not just between western and eastern cultures in their concep
tualizations of change but also among eastern cultures, in par
ticular in their receptions of western science and technology.
The philosophers von Wright and Rescher seem to agree on
the distinction between change and its evaluation but disagree
on the evaluation of the change. Garcia-Bellido speaks for and
Wolters against the notion of progress in biological evolu
tion - nor do they agree on whether the progress of biology
should move us to introduce or to drop the concept of pro
gress in nature. The different roles and differing status of the
idea of progress in the course of western history before the
modern age, where it has come to be so dominant are put into
focus by the contributions of Burkert and Crombie. Flotzin-
ger shows the difficulties involved in using the concept of pro
gress in describing the relation of one age’s musicians and mu
sic theorists to another’s; but also it seems that our reticence in
talking about progress, or even more neutrally, about develop
ment in the arts is of fairly recent vintage. Prawitz argues that
the seeming return of the same (old) problems in philosophy is
in reality the return of problems of the same type in a more
sophisticated form, and he charts some recent progress in one
area of philosophical research, logic. Finally Lazar points out
some of the paradoxes of scientific progress in its effects on
practical life.
The contributions to this volume are offered as food for
thought and reflection about the progress of science and soci
ety and in particular on the effects of scientific progress on our
society.
Arnold Burgen
Peter McLaughlin
Jurgen Mittelstrass
Progress: Fact and Fiction
4 See W. Burkert, “Eracle e gli altri eroi culturali del Vicino O rien te,” in: C.
Bonnet, C . Jourdain-A nnequin, ed., Heracles d ’une rive a I’autre de la
M editerranee, Bruxelles 1992, 111-127.
5 O dyssey 9, 177-555.
6 Baton von Sinope, Fragm ente d er Griechiscben Historiker 268 F 5; Meuli
1041 f.; Caduff 246-249.
There is a related set of Greek myths which too reflects on
‘uncivilized’ antecedents of present ‘civilization’, but makes
the gods, the ‘givers of good things,’ the very protagonists. It is
Demeter in particular, the corn goddess, who brought grain to
Eleusis - Schiller adapted this tradition in his poem Das
Eleusinische Fest - and Dionysus who taught man how to pro
duce wine. But other achievements, too, are inventions of
gods,7 the taming of the horse,8 the construction of the cha
riot,9 metalwork, and even the making of cheese.10 The conse
quence is, once again, a persistent cult of the gods, not without
fear that the gods might withdraw their gifts if offended. There
are festivals to recall the previous stage and the progress due to
divine intervention. There may be initiation rituals to recon
struct the transition from ‘wild’ to cultivated life, from a pas
toral stage or even from cannibalism and ‘werewolves’.11 A
concept of ‘tame’ or ‘cultivated’ life (hem eros ) goes together
with ‘cultivated’ plants, grain and vine; in fact these have been
selected and genetically altered through millennia of Neolithic
cultivation, and need constant tending. One might be tempted
to say that the ‘Neolithic revolution’ survives enshrined in the
traditions of ritual and myth.
In general these strike an optimistic note. “I escaped from
evil, I found the better,” this is recited at Athens on the occa
sion of marriage by a child crowned with thistles and acorns,
carrying a basket with bread.12 Old and bad life, thistles and
acorns, are left behind thanks to Demeter’s gifts. It is a relief to
conform to civilization’s exigencies - this is the lesson taught,
acceptance of society as it is now; it could be worse, and myths
are ready to tell that it was worse in the beginning. Civilization
7 C f. in general Plat. Polit. 274d, Phil. 16c. F o r details o f the mythical and
quasi-m ythical traditions, see Kleingunther.
8 A ttributed to Athena, Pindar Ol. 13,65 f.
9 A ttributed to Athena, H om eric H y m n to Aphrodite 12-15.
10 Taught by the nymphs to Aristaios, Diodorus 4,81,2.
11 F o r the Arkadian ‘werewolves’, see B urkert 1983, 84-93.
12 Pausanias Atticista e 87; Zenobios 3,98 (Paroemiographi Graeci I 82).
means rescue from monsters, from helplessness, from starva
tion. Life of men is contrasted in particular to animals, the con
dition humaine is established between animals and gods.
Within the great family of cultural myths, the interest of
mythologists has mainly concentrated on one particular speci
men, Prometheus and the origin of fire. It is our anthropologi
cal perspective that makes the management of fire one of the
distinctive steps in the process of hominization. The myth of
Prometheus the Titanic trickster is told twice in Hesiod.13 It is
less naive than the groups of myths just mentioned, because it
implies a double perspective and a double change, towards the
better and towards the worse. That man cannot do without
fire must always have been clear, but this myth makes the ac
quisition of fire a theft, punished by the superior god, and it
goes on to describe the disastrous consequences through its
sequel, the creation of woman, the Pandora story. Thus two
main institutions of civilized life are discredited, sacrifice and
marriage. Sacrifice is deceit, because men burn the inedible
parts of the victim for the gods and eat the rest themselves, and
marriage is economic ruin for man who still cannot do without
a woman. In addition, Pandora’s barrel of evils and diseases
has been opened once and for all. Thus, gain is counterbal
anced by loss, instead of the ‘positive’ versions in myth and
ritual which proclaim acceptance of the present state as in
stalled with the help of gods, Prometheus indicates the prob
lems of human culture, the cost of change, the ambivalence of
gods. The Aeschylean drama from the 5th century, Prom e
theus Bound ,14 goes on to escalate the conflict of men and
15 See W .G. Lam bert, A .R . Millard, Atra-hasis. The Babylonian Story o f the
Flood, O xford 1969.
16 Suffice it to refer to B. G atz, Weltalter, Goldene Zeit und sinnverwandte
Vorstellungen, Hildesheim 1967; West 1978, 172-204; W. Burkert, “Apoka-
lyptik im friihen Griechentum : Impulse und Transform ationen,” in: D.
H ellholm , ed., Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the N ear
East, Tubingen 1983, 235-254.
quence of devaluation in an unforgettable way. The myth has
retained its particular fascination far beyond the ancient world.
To sum up, there are dissonant reflections and elaborations
on the achievements and problems of human civilization, there
is no unanimity even at the stage of myth.
As to the second, the ‘Presocratic’ stage, one may well speak
of an intellectual revolution in Greece during the 5th century,
even if it remains difficult to describe and to explain this ade
quately. This was a period of fundamental political, economic,
and social change, with the invention of isonomia, later called
dem okratia, the unexpected but glorious outcome of the Per
sian wars, the economic boom concentrating on the new cen
ter, Athens, the growing chances for individual careers. The
limitations of the Greek world made themselves felt again at
the close of the 5th century, with the Persians regaining con
trol in the East and the Carthaginians destroying Greek Sicily
in the West.
The intellectual foundations had already been laid in the 6th
century. In the background there was real progress in crafts
and arts which can clearly be seen, e.g., in large-scale temple
building, in tunnels for water-supply, in bronze casting, in
red-figure vase painting. No doubt “crafts have made progress
(.epidedokasin ), and in comparison with the contemporary
artists the old ones are not worth much,” as a later Platonic
text puts it.17 In emerging prose literature we find a new and
exceptional trust in individual knowledge and cognition, with
writers starting to write ‘on the universe’ and eager to contra
dict current beliefs of ‘the Greeks’ or of ‘men’ tout court; they
discover ‘nature’ (physis) as an independent, autonomous yet
understandable complex of processes, encompassing human
life. Somewhat later there arises the thesis that individual life
can be decisively changed and modeled through education, in
contrast to inherited social roles and replication of patriarchal
authority. This is the impact of the so-called sophists who
18 Tim otheos Fr. 21 ed. Page; Tim otheos, Persai 219-33; cf. [Arist.] Met.
9 9 3 b l5 ; contrast Plutarch, D e musica 1135c and pass.
19 Thucydides 1,71,2 f.; cf. de Romilly.
The triumph of achievement marks a scientific text from the
first decennia of the 4th century B.C ., the Hippocratic writing
‘On ancient Medicine’. “Medicine has long had all its means to
hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method,
through which the discoveries, which are many and excellent,
have been made, during a long period of time, and the rest will
be discovered, if somebody competent and with knowledge of
the discoveries already made will conduct research, starting
from these.”20 It was ‘necessity’ (ananke ), the text says, that
originally prompted research, there has been gradual progress,
much has been achieved by now, and further progress is fore
seen: The science of medicine will be “complete” in a not too
distant future, through further research. Thus in the special
field of this ‘art’, the idea of progress doubtless exists, even
without a characteristic term.
It was in the context of the 5th century that a general and
consistent theory about the progress of civilization originated,
the so-called ‘Kulturentstehungslehre’.21 Unfortunately schol
ars remain entangled in philological problems. We have a set of
texts the historical-philological interrelation of which cannot
be established with certainty. The main documents are the fa
mous choral ode of Sophocles’ Antigone, polla ta deina, dated
to 441 B.C .,22 and Plato’s Protagoras ,23 It is possible that Pro
tagoras the sophist, who was active after about 450 B.C ., was
20 Hippocrates, D e vetere medicina 2,19; the date o f the text - between ca.
400 and ca. 350 - is controversial.
21 See U xkull-G yllenband; Spoerri; C ole; Karl Reinhardt’s hypothesis that
D em ocritus was the ultimate source of Diodrus 1,8 and hence the decisive
theorist, accepted by Kranz in D K 68 B 5, has to be given up. The only real
piece o f evidence for D em ocritus is D K 68 B 144, see at n. 41.
22 Sophocles, Antigone 332-375. Some motifs are resumed in Euripides, Sup-
plices 196-215, about 422 B .C .
23 Probably the form of myth chosen in P lato’s Protagoras 320c-323a is
P lato’s verdict on Protagoras’ theory: A just-so-story.
the original source, with a book “O n the state of things in the
beginning.”24
The theory starts with the difference of man versus animals
with regard to ‘survival’: By natural endowment, humans are
inferior to many well specialized animals. Man needs clothing
and houses, and weapons to fight ferocious animals. Hence
practical necessity ( chreia) forced man to make pertinent in
ventions, gradually and in a long and tentative process, yet
with evident success: Man has become dominant, he managed
to subdue the animals, to work the earth, to navigate at sea.
Still this is not sufficient. There is no less cogent need for social
collaboration; it is language which makes this possible, to
gether with social rules, with forms of ‘justice’ that result in
the establishment of ‘cities’. The city, polis, is the normal form
of human habitat in the Greek perspective. Hence the pride of
human dem otes , as voiced in Sophocles’ Antigone. The word
deinos means ‘terrible’ by etymology, but has developed to
mean ‘impressive’ or ‘admirable’. Sophocles plays on this am
bivalence: “Nothing is more terrible/admirable than man.”
Here we find a functional analysis of society in the disguise
of reconstructed cultural history. It is presented practically
without factual basis, but for the defective endowment of ‘nat
ural’ man; arguments are drawn from putative ‘needs’. Gods
have disappeared from the picture. Already Xenophanes, to
wards the end of the 6th century, had criticized myth: “It is
not true that gods have shown everything to mortals in the
beginning, but in the course of time, through search, they find
out what is better.”25 ‘Search’ and ‘findings’ through a long
stretch of ‘time’. If not the word, the idea of progress is prefig
71 Augustinus, D e civitate dei 12,14: “fit ergo aliquid novi in tempore, quod
finem non habet tem poris”.
72 ib. 10,14: “humani generis...recta eruditio per quosdam articulos tempo-
rum tamquam aetatum profecit accessibus”.
73 ib. 22,30.
417 - has still another sequence: History, he writes in his in
troduction, is a terrifying collection of atrocities; yet there has
been evolution towards the better: “Death, thirsty of blood,
had reigned when the religion which holds back from blood
was unknown; when this religion began to shine, death became
stunned; death is coming to an end as religion has gained supe
riority now; death will thoroughly cease to exist, when this
religion will reign alone - except for the last days,” the epoch
of the Antichrist which is to precede the end of the world; for
the earlier periods, Orosius sets the demarcations with Augus
tus and Constantine.74 To start chronology with the birth of
Christ was not introduced before 525 A.D., in the work of
Dionysius Exiguus.75
Yet the ideology of profound change, of renewal of the
world and the beginning of a process towards the reign of god
goes much farther back within the Christian message. Already
St. Paul wrote: “The old has passed; behold, the new has
arisen” (II Cor. 5,17). “Behold, I make new everything,” God
himself proclaims in the Apocalypse (21,5). Clement of
Alexandria, about A.D. 200, a Christian in full command of
the classical paideia, writes in his Protreptikos : “Let us shut up
tragedies and raving poets ... together with satyrs and the in
sane thiasos and the other chorus of demons, at Helikon and
Kithairon, mountains infeebled with age; let us bring down
truth from above, from heavens, together with brilliant in
sig h t...”76 Helikon and Kithairon, the mountain of the Muses
and the Mountain of Dionysus, i.e. Homer, Hesiod and
tragedy altogether have ‘grown old’, Greek civilization is ag
ing; Christian truth will overcome the senility of paganism.
Paul’s epistle to the Colossians had already declared: “The
gospel is being brought to fruit in the whole world (kosm os ), it
is growing, just as it does grow in yourself, ever since the day
that you have heard it and have recognized the grace of God in
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The Chinese “ C y clic” View of H istory vs.
Japanese “ Progress”
3 Joseph Needham, “Tim e and Knowledge in China and the W est,” in J.T.
Fraser (ed.), The Voices o f Time, reprinted in Needham, The G rand Titra
tion: Science and Society in East and West (London: Allen and Unwin,
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Short bibliography
■*--------------- ► Space
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Figure 2:
Two space-times S and S' which are determined by identical initial conditions
on the initial time slice. In (a) the space-time S is maximally extended, whereas
in (b) it is terminated at some time t1, but no physical infinity or other barrier
to its future continuation arises then. T he space-time .S'' is therefore identical to
S until the time t,, but does not exist to the future o f t r In practice, cosm olo-
gists always assume that a given set o f initial conditions physically realises the
maximally extended space-time and not one of the infinite number o f alterna
tives that are identical to it until some arbitrary moment when they cease to
exist.
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Some paths fo r space-times whose boundary consists of two three-dim ensio
nal spaces o f curvature g ( and g2 respectively where the matter fields are pre
scribed by m , and m v