The Concept of Progress

The concept of progress is often applied by philosophers and historians in confusing ways; the concept deserves clarification. First, it would be appropriate to make distinctions between the general progress of mankind, different kinds of progress in various fields of human activity (art, law, and philosophy), and the idea of scientific progress. There is a great deal of consensus in existing research that the idea of scientific progress became the model for all kinds of progress at the beginning of the Enlightenment. What is lacking, however, is a convincing answer to the question of where the idea of scientific progress came from. In this chapter, three previous interpretations of the origin of the idea of (scientific) progress are rejected: that the idea was the result of the advancement of knowledge; that the idea was the result of the secularization of eschatology; and that the idea existed in classical antiquity and was only revived in early modern times. This chapter also outlines the methodological tenets of the book. From the methodological point of view, the presented research is situated in the vicinity of Lorraine Daston’s historical epistemology and subscribes to Hans Blumenberg’s philosophical analyses of early modern science and philosophy. The main thesis of the book claims that the idea of scientific progress represented a methodological response to the contingency of nature. When nature was conceived as an inactive set of corpuscles that is completely indifferent to the human desire for knowledge and human cognitive capacities, it became clear that knowledge of nature must adopt a temporal regime. The bearer of this temporal regime was an institution.