Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 An introduction
- Part 2 Homopugnax: the violent species
- Part 3 Homo egoisticus: the selfish species
- Part 4 Homo operans: the greedy species
- Part 5 Homo sapiens: the human species
- 12 The reductionist imperative
- 13 Human communication
- 14 Teaching and tradition
- 15 The question
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 An introduction
- Part 2 Homopugnax: the violent species
- Part 3 Homo egoisticus: the selfish species
- Part 4 Homo operans: the greedy species
- Part 5 Homo sapiens: the human species
- 12 The reductionist imperative
- 13 Human communication
- 14 Teaching and tradition
- 15 The question
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
I believe it will be easier for the generations to come; our experience will be at their service … One wants to make history so that those generations may not have the right to say of us that we were nonentities or worse.
Anton ChekhovA historian has described how ‘In 1895 the novelist Henry James acquired electric lighting; in 1896 he rode a bicycle; in 1897 he wrote on a typewriter; in 1898 he saw a cinematograph. Within a very few years he could have had a Freudian analysis, travelled in an aircraft. …’ But it is not divulged whether Henry James looked on all these innovations with approval. Did he regard them as examples of progress? And, if he did, in what sense? The question we face in this final chapter is what further social change is both possible and desirable.
Perfectibility
According to K.R. Popper, ‘In science (and only in science) can we say that we have made genuine progress: that we know more than we did before.’ (Not all Popper's fellow-philosophers agree with him.) Popper here equates progress with increasing knowledge – an unusual definition. The primary meaning of progress is forward motion: the movement may be toward a desired destination or over a cliff. A wider meaning occurs in expressions such as the progress of a disease, where the meaning is close to that of growth or development.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biology and FreedomAn Essay on the Implications of Human Ethology, pp. 284 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989