History Of The Idea Of Progress

Author : Robert Nisbet
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2017-07-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351515467

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History of the Idea of Progress by Robert Nisbet Pdf

The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.

Author : Robert A. Nisbet
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2024-05-23
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781412825481

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History of the Idea of Progress by Robert A. Nisbet Pdf

Author : Sidney Pollard
Publisher : Penguin Group
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1971
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015049831186

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The Idea of Progress by Sidney Pollard Pdf

Author : Arthur M. Melzer,M. Richard Zinman,Jerry Weinberger
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019-05-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781501744679

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History and the Idea of Progress by Arthur M. Melzer,M. Richard Zinman,Jerry Weinberger Pdf

The publication of Francis Fukuyama's article, "The End of History?" prompted a wave of public debates about democracy, progress, and the idea of history. In this book, twelve distinguished cultural commentators offer a brilliant array of responses to those debates. Fukuyama's controversial essay had considered whether Western-style democracy might be the endpoint of an inevitable historical development. For the present volume, the chapters—none of which has appeared elsewhere—include both a keynote chapter by Fukuyama and a series of spirited alternatives to his position. Additional essays examine the historical and philosophical origins of the idea of history that lies behind today's perspectives on progress and politics.

Author : David Spadafora,James Spada
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 488 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1990-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0300046715

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The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-century Britain by David Spadafora,James Spada Pdf

The idea of progress stood at the very center of the intellectual world of eighteenth-century Britain, closely linked to every major facet of the British Enlightenment as well as to the economic revolutions of the period. Drawing on hundreds of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets, David Spadafora here provides the most extensive discussion ever written of this prevailing sense of historical optimism.

Author : Amy Allen
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2016-01-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780231540636

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The End of Progress by Amy Allen Pdf

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

Author : Ronald Wright
Publisher : House of Anansi
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Civilization
ISBN : 9780887847066

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A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright Pdf

Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

Author : J. B. Bury
Publisher : Courier Corporation
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2014-01-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780486780665

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The Idea of Progress by J. B. Bury Pdf

Wide-ranging, erudite and stimulating, this thought-provoking volume describes the birth and development of one of the most important basic ideas of our civilization: progress, or the concept that humanity is advancing in a definite and desirable direction. Throughout, Bury examines the contributions of Darwin, Descartes, Voltaire, Locke, and other important thinkers.

Author : Peter J. Bowler
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2021-03-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108842556

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Progress Unchained by Peter J. Bowler Pdf

Bowler traces ideas about progress using evolutionary biology to throw light on parallel changes in the understanding of social development.

Author : Ludwig Edelstein
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2019-12-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781421435589

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The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity by Ludwig Edelstein Pdf

Originally published in 1967. Ludwig Edelstein characterizes the idea of "progress" in Greek and Roman times. He analyzes the ancients' belief in "a tendency inherent in nature or in man to pass through a regular sequence of stages of development in past, present, and future, the latter stages being—with perhaps occasional retardations or minor regressions—superior to the earlier." Edelstein's contemporaries asserted that the Greeks and Romans were entirely ignorant of a belief in progress in this sense of the term. In arguing against this dominant thesis, Edelstein draws from the conclusions of scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses ideas of Auguste Comte and Wilhelm Dilthey.

Author : Christopher Dawson
Publisher : CUA Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2012-08-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813218199

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Progress and Religion by Christopher Dawson Pdf

Progress and Religion was perhaps the most influential of all Christopher Dawson's books, establishing him as an interpreter of history and a historian of ideas.

Author : John Bagnell Bury
Publisher : BoD - Books on Demand
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2022-02-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9782382740606

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The Idea of Progress by John Bagnell Bury Pdf

"We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation." Contents: • Some Interpretations of Universal History: Bodin and Le Roy • Utility the End of Knowledge: Bacon • Cartesianism • The Doctrine of Degeneration: the Ancients and Moderns • The Progress of Knowledge: Fontenelle • The General Progress of Man: Abbe De Saint-Pierre • New Conceptions of History: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot • The Encyclopaedists and Economists • Was Civilisation a Mistake? Rousseau, Chastellux • The Year 2440 • The French Revolution: Condorcet • The Theory of Progress in England • German Speculations on Progress • Currents of Thought in France After the Revolution • The Search for a Law of Progress: • "Progress" in the French Revolutionary Movement (1830-1851) • Material Progress: the Exhibition of 1851 • Progress in the Light of Evolution.

Author : Antoine-Nicholas Condorcet
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2009-04-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780578016665

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Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind by Antoine-Nicholas Condorcet Pdf

Perhaps the last great work of the Enlightenment, this landmark in intellectual history is the Marquis de Condorcet's homage to the human future emancipated from its chains and led by the progress of reason and the establishment of liberty. Writing in 1794, while in hiding, under sentence of death from the Jacobins in revolutionary France, Condorcet surveys human history and speculates upon its future. With William Godwin, he is the chief foil of Malthus's Essay on Population. Portrayed by Malthus as an elate and giddy optimist, Condorcet foresees a future of indefinite progress. Freed from ignorance and superstition, he argues that the human race stands on the threshold of epochal progress and limitless improvement. Condorcet defies modernist stereotypes of the right and the left. He is at once precursor of the free market and social democracy. This new edition of the original 1795 English translation, is the only English translation of a work of Condorcet currently in print.

Author : John C. Caiazza
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2017-07-05
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781351484275

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The Crisis of Progress by John C. Caiazza Pdf

This book is about the concept of progress, its separate varieties, its current rejection, and how it may be reconsidered from a philosophical and scientific basis. John C. Caiazza's main emphasis is on how science is understood as it has a direct impact on social values as expressed by prominent philosophers. He argues that progress is at a standstill, which presents a crisis for Western civilization.Caiazza presents historical examples, both of scientific inquiry and social and cultural themes, to examine the subject of progress. Beginning with the Whig model and progressive political values exemplified by Bacon and Dewey, he also examines other variations, the Enlightenment, cosmopolitanism, and totalitarianism. Technology, argues Caiazza, also has a stultifying effect on Western culture and to understand the idea of progress, we must take a philosophic rather than a scientific point of view. Modern cosmology has inevitable humanistic and theological implications, and major contemporary philosophers reject social science in favour of ancient concepts of virtue and ethics.In the end, Caiazza writes that time is an agent, not a neutral plain on which scientific and historical events occur. We can expect technology to keep us in stasis or become aware of the possibility of transcendence. This book will be of interest for students of scientific history and philosophy.

Author : Charles Van Doren
Publisher : New York : F. A. Praeger
Page : 524 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1967
Category : Progress
ISBN : UVA:X000426021

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The Idea of Progress by Charles Van Doren Pdf