Talk:Progress (history)

message: What about the idea of progress as seen outside the West?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.89.238.202 (talk) 15:35, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Progress in other cultures? 

message: First, what is progress?  I extrapolated a definition from vague ramblings in the text, but I am not an expert.  What perspective does the article take -- a philosophical discussion about progress, or the history of the idea?  Currently, it is written as the history.  If it is meant to be about philosophy of the idea, more stuff as in the "20th century" section should be summarized as the current introduction. -Pgan002 09:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is the article about? 

message: the section "Status of Women" is currently placed as a subsection of "History" as an equal-level title along with historical periods like Antiquity, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. This seems poorly organized. I had integrated it into the Modernity section as the dates references in there fall within that period, but Rjensen has undone that change. Per WP:BRD I'm here to discuss. Please explain why this should be in its own section and not a part of the Modern history of progress? If nothing else, it certainly doesn't belong as a section alongside historical periods as it is now. --Pfhorrest (talk)
::I suggest the "status of women" theme covers a lot of subfields--such as the status of women in China, in Europe, in the ancient world, etc.--historians do range pretty widely and the topic is not merely confined to the modern period.Rjensen (talk) 01:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, then maybe it should go alongside Economics et al as a section about progress in a particular area? It just seems odd to have "History: Antiquity, Enlightment, Modernity, Status of Women". One of these things is not like the others.... :-) --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: these are all fields of history and women's history is also a major field of history.  The economics section probably should be retitled because it's not about the changes in economic theory, it's about economic historyRjensen (talk) 03:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sensing some confusion of scope and purpose here. As I see it, this entire article is about a sub-topic within the field of history: that of Progress. Then within the discussion of Progress, there is the sub-topic of the history of the idea or concept of Progress, i.e. what scholars have said over the years on the topic of "Progress", which is what the "History" section here is for, subdivided into historical eras. Then there are further sub-topics on what scholars have said on the topic of "Progress" with respect to various areas: how/whether there have been progressive changes in, e.g., social structures, scientific theories, philosophical theories, economic structures, etc, throughout history. I would think that the "Status of Women" section would belong best as one of those sections: it is about how/whether there has been progressive changes in the social status of women throughout history. (Though honestly, I think both it and the Economics section are properly subsets of Social progress and should be incorporated into that article, rather than here). --Pfhorrest (talk) 03:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

text: the article is not about progress at all. It is about a theory of how history operates as debated by historians. Rjensen (talk) 03:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Woman's history is a subfield of historiography and the article discusses how scholars have applied the Idea of Progress to the study of women. On economics, the issue is not whether economics as a discipline has made progress but how the topic of economic development became a special application of the Idea of Progress.  The section on philosophy seems  to be whether philosophers do a better job or worse than their predecessors. Rjensen (talk) 05:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: And the section on scientific progress is about whether modern scientific theories are any better or worse than older ones, yet you don't object to that. What's the difference between it and the section on philosophical progress? --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the section on scientific progress should be dropped too. Rjensen (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Status of Women 

message: Ok, based on the new section lede of your (Rjensen)'s most recent edit, in the section now titled "Idea of Progress" I am getting the impression that what you mean by "Idea of Progress" might be something like "the theory that technological progress entails social progress", or put in more layman's terms, "the theory that improvements in technology necessarily imply improvements in society". Is that correct?
If so, it doesn't seem that all the material in the section now titled "Idea of Progress" (or in the old article of the same name) is solely about that theory. Much of it seems to be about progress in more general terms: for example, the section on the American revolution speaks entirely about how changes in social structures could or would improve society, which is about social progress in abstract, not about technological progress causing social progress.
Likewise the section on Antiquity says nothing about technology improving society, but more about whether things are generally getting better or worse or moving in cycles, i.e. questions of progress in abstract, not this more particular "Idea of Progress" theory. Even in the section on Enlightment, only the first two paragraphs say anything about technology; the latter two are more about defining Progress in abstract, e.g. "Adam Ferguson defined human progress as the working out of a divine plan". The section "Modernization" is largely about technology improving society, except for the "Status of Women" subsection, which is just about improvement in women's social status over time (i.e. social progress for women), nothing about whether that has any relation to technology.
I suggest that we go through and separate the section I had titled "History" and you have titled "Idea of Progress" and split it into two sections; one on the history of scholarly writing on the general idea or concept of Progress (titled "History"), and one on the specific theory called the "Idea of Progress" (titled thus), into the latter of which "Criticism" would be subsumed as a subsection. If the latter of those is large enough, it may even warrant remaining its own separate article at Idea of Progress (which would be summarized and main'd from here). The purpose of my proposed merger to here was to consolidate material into an article on progress in general, not one on such a specific theory of how progress in one area related to progress in another; so if that is the intended scope of the article that was at Idea of Progress, perhaps the merger was not a good idea to begin with, though even if so I think it has been productive to the improvement of all the articles involved. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: the section on the  Am Revolution tries to say that Enlightenment leaders (like Jefferson) believed that the Idea of Progress endorsed their political actions. The ancient history section is too brief, I agree, but it was supposed to link to the much-argued proposition that the history of the status of women validates the Idea of P. (says Leo Marx & Mazlish). Rjensen (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope of this article 

message: The simplest approach is to move the sections on the Idea of Progress and Myth of Progress back to the "Idea of Progress" article. That will allow editors to ad d all they want here and rename it as they please. Rjensen (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Another approach

message: Hey. I saw someone requested a third opinion for this page, so here it is. Titling an article "Idea of Progress" seems awkward to me, and is probably a violation of WP:NAME. I also think that it would be inappropriate to redirect this page to Progress and move Progress to its own disambiguation page, as this is just one definition of 'progress'. One alternative would be to move this to Historical progress or Human progress. One other thing you could do, and that would probably be best, would be to open it up for consensus by listing it at Wikipedia:Requested moves and get other people to comment on it. Thoughts? — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 06:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Third opinion 

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
*Opppose. There's no reason that this particular definition of 'progress' should take precedent over any other. — HelloAnnyong (say whaaat?!) 18:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: :Any additional comments:
: Outside commentators, please see the section titled Rename this article above for previous discussion on this subject. --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I was flipping through Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near the other day and thinking about its implications for progress as a historical idea. Kurzweil's book seems to be (one of several) logical evolutions of the ideal of progress discussed in this article. He holds many of the same tenets as the Enlightenment thinkers described within this article. However, he updates the ideal of progress by considering the implications of possible 21st century advances in technology. Are there any other thinkers and/or intellectual trends that might contribute to a sub-section (perhaps placed after the "Enlightenment" section in the chronological overview?) that details current manifestations of "progressive" thought?
Implications of Kurzweil's work for the ideal of progress and/or history:
1) Exponential, not linear progress
2) The end of history: when the Singularity occurs, the rate at which new events occur will outpace traditional methods of history, while the new man/machine intelligence will be able to comprehend all of history in a manner presently inconceivable.
Note that these are merely the ideas that I extrapolated from Kurzweil's book; maybe some one knows an article that has explored the topic already? This is probably a can of worms best not opened, but I was just going to throw it out there, in case there are any takers.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Latvahat (talk • contribs) 02:16, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds like a good idea to me. I believe there are others besides Kurzweil who have written on that subject too, though I know he is an important figure there. Perhaps draw from resources cited by articles such as Techno-progressivism and Transhumanism to help build such a section. Please go right ahead :-) --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exponential Progress? 

message: Slightly tired of the Philhellenistic bias in, well, pretty much everything.  Many Sumerian stories begin with the line like "Men used to eat grass with their mouths like sheep" for instance "How grain came to Sumer" http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.6# maybe this is worth mentioning. Moon Oracle (talk) 20:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Always with the Greeks 

message: See Talk:Social progress. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:50, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second merge proposal