Talk:Idea of progress

Change of Name

Suggest a move to "The Idea of Progress". Its an article about a definite idea and therefore requires the definite article. Domminico (talk) 23:28, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

FAIL

Someone misquoted Robert Nisbet. Look up the quote and fix it, please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.122.182.39 (talk) 19:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Redirect

Rjensen, since we seem to agree on the idea of a merger, though disagree on the title of the resulting article, and since IF the merged article currently at Progress (history) does get renamed to this title (Idea of Progress) as you would like, this article will need to be deleted by an admin to make way for the move (as would the article currently at Progress if I get my way), I'm going to go ahead and redirect this article there to complete the merger, and we can then continue the debate there about where that article should be moved to. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. let's ask for a speedy delete of Idea of Progress, leaving the new title undecided. (we are doing it this way to oblige your request to keep the edit history alive for History (progress), which we agree is a bad title.Rjensen (talk) 01:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think a speedy delete is necessarily the right thing to request at this point. I believe that once we settle on a new title for the merged article, we can request an admin to move it, and they will do so in a way that will preserve the history of the target article name as well (e.g. if it moves here to Idea of Progress, the history of your and other edits to this page will be moved elsewhere and referenced from the talk page, so they are not lost to the bit bucket; see for example Talk:Rights#Note_about_page_history). So let's conclude the debate on the name first, and then let the admins handle things they way they know best. --Pfhorrest (talk) 01:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

OK I fully agree. Rjensen (talk) 04:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

start over

Let's start over and keep this article--discussions about merger went nowhere because of profound disagreement about what is being covered.Rjensen (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

dab hatnote

I added a hatnote which read "This article is about the theory that scientific progress produces social progress...". Rjensen changed that to read "This article is about the theory that scientific and social progress improves the human condition...". I'm curious: what exactly is meant by "social progress" if not "improvement of the human condition"? To my ear, the current text sounds like it's saying "...improvement in our understanding of the physical world [scientific progress] and improvement in the general well-being of humans [social progress] produces improvement in the general well-beiing of humans...", which seems redundant and tautological. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Social progress means infrastructure changes--like rule of law, peace, new schools, reduced violence, better transportation, better communication, better monetary system, better medical facilities. You can really see the difference in Haiti when the sudden collapse of the infrastructure degraded the condition of most individuals.Rjensen (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Evolution

@Rjensen: I've tried to untangle the content in question.

• "any biological being's only capability is to exploit it's environment"

I can't figure out what is meant here, but it seems that it will only be true if using unusual definitions of "capability," "exploit," and/or "environment." It seems related to the common misconception "life's only purpose is survival/reproduction" (and related statements) which conflates the species with the individual. It's probably an attempt to refer to to the colloquially named "short-sightedness" of evolution, but this statement doesn't lead into the rest of the sentence.

• "It is commonly mistaken that evolution has a specific direction of progress, known as survival of the fittest"

This is not survival of the fittest - the reason that there is no specific direction of progress is that fitness is contingent on the environment. Also, it is more accurate to state that it is not possible to coherently relate the concept of progress to evolution (at least, independent of the environment), rather than just that there isn't a direction.

• "several cases of 'regression' have been identified"

This is actually very common (see Vestigiality), but "several cases" implies the opposite. Also, "regression" is thankfully in scare quotes but it is still a term to avoid.

• "by the mechanism of Genetic admixture"

Genetic admixture is not related to the above concepts. It refers to gene flow between two populations of the same species or during hybridization.

With regard to the RS requested in your edit summary, the source listed is not reliable for scientific statements, and besides the cited pages (147-148) don't seem to mention evolution, so those considerations come first. Sunrise (talk) 04:36, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with sunrise to delete this Rjensen (talk) 04:42, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Question

What sources establish the distinction between this topic and Progress (history)? I've looked at a few of them and I can't find anything unambiguous, like the use of "Idea of Progress" as a (capitalized) proper noun in a place you wouldn't otherwise expect capitalization. AFAICT all the uses of the terms in these sources can be interpreted as just pointing out that progress is in fact an idea, rather than identifying it as a separate concept. Sunrise (talk) 04:29, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to know that. I had proposed a merger between the two a while back and was opposed by another editor above. As this topic is not my area of expertise I backed off but I never did get clear why there needed to be two separate articles. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I read it this way. When historians talk about "progress" they referred to things like life expectancy, peace, economic growth, modernization, and so on, in specific context regarding France or China or Peru or whatever. However, when historians talk about "the idea of progress" them they are talking about intellectuals ranging from Optimists like Herbert Spencer to pessimists like Oswald Spengler. That is, they Dissect the intellectual arguments made by various philosophers and historians, and pay little attention to France or China or Peru or whatever. Rjensen (talk) 05:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

So you mean that the distinction is between the philosophical aspects of progress compared to its historical aspects? If so, it seems to me that this article would be better named Progress (philosophy). That said, I'm still not convinced there's enough of a distinction to warrant separate articles (except if they were subarticles of a more general Progress article). On that note, per WP:CONCEPTDAB we probably need a full article at Progress instead of a dab page, so the content from one or both of these articles probably needs to be moved there. Sunrise (talk) 00:51, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

"The idea of progress" is a very well known term, widely used by scholars ( meeting the Theoretical discussion about the concept of progress) in history, sociology, and other fields. I do not see any advantage in merging two articles. Rjensen (talk) 01:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, my concern is that I don't really see what establishes "idea of progress" as a concept separate from "progress." Like I said, I looked through a bunch of sources and couldn't find any support for this. Also, if this article is the general conceptual discussion on progress (I think that's what you refer to as "theoretical"?), then it should be moved to Progress, again per CONCEPTDAB. Sunrise (talk) 04:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Progress is disambiguation into six specialized forms, including the idea of progress. Rjensen (talk) 05:00, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that is the problem - our guidelines say that this type of organization should be avoided. Sunrise (talk) 22:46, 28 January 2015 (UTC)