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On Progress

Is Progress a Straight Line?

1 min read

Do societies fall under a possible or impossible progress track? And what does progress mean in a civilization context?

Science, in any field, has a direction and can measure progress. Literature, on the other hand, has no progress line. It's not evolving in any particular direction.

Philosophy sits comfortably between these two modes. Wittgenstein, for example, had little care for philosophy done before him. Doing philosophy is not the same as researching philosophy history.

— Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy