What is Progress

Summary

Does the idea of progress still apply to our times? If so, what does progress really mean?

Today, many believe that progress is a word to be avoided, a relic from a past, the dangerous product of an era of intellectual naivety that would be best forgotten. Yet, the idea of progress is rooted in a human impulse that is both profound and essential, a way of interpreting history without which our ability to plan the future, our very identity would be at stake.

Written just before the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic—which is now putting its argument to the hardest of tests—this lucid essay explores how science and technology have been, and can still be, a powerful engine for human and humane advancement.