Progress is a movement towards the refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it intended to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, & social organization make-up resulted, and by acknowledgment will keep on to result, in an modernizing human condition; the latter may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through activism, or as a natural component of sociocultural evolution.
Sociologist Robert Nisbet said that "No single picture has been more important than ... the abstraction of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years", and defines five "crucial premises" of the idea of progress:
Sociologist P. A. Sorokin said, "The ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Roman, and almost of the medieval thinkers supporting theories of rhythmical, cyclical or trendless movements of social processes were much nearer to reality than the present proponents of the linear view". Unlike Confucianism and to aextent Taoism, that both search for an ideal past, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition believes in the fulfillment of history, which was translated into the idea of progress in the advanced age. Therefore, Chinese proponents of renovation have looked to western models. According to Thompson, the gradual Qing dynasty reformer, Kang Youwei, believed he had found a return example for adjust and "modernisation" in the Ancient Chinese Classics.
Philosopher Karl Popper said that progress was non fully adequate as a scientific description of social phenomena.
More recently, Kirkpatrick Sale, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite author, wrote exclusively about progress as a myth, in an essay entitled "Five Facets of a Myth".
Iggers 1965 says that proponents of progress underestimated the extent of man's destructiveness and irrationality, while critics misunderstand the role of rationality and morality in human behavior.
In 1946, psychoanalyst Charles Baudouin claimed modernity has retained the "corollary" of the progress myth, the idea that the present is superior to the past, while at the same time insisting that it is for free of the myth:
The last two centuries were familiar with the myth of progress. Our own century has adopted the myth of modernity. The one myth has replaced the other. ...
Men ceased to believe in progress; but only to pin their faith to more tangible realities, whose sole original significance had been that they were the instruments of progress. ..
This exaltation of the present ... is a corollary of that very faith in progress which people claim to throw discarded. The present is superior to the past, by definition, only in a mythology of progress. Thus one retains the corollary while rejecting the principle. There is only one way of retaining a position of whose instability one is conscious. One must simply refrain from thinking.
A cyclical theory of history was adopted by Oswald Spengler 1880–1936, a German historian who wrote The Decline of the West in 1920. World War I, World War II, and the rise of totalitarianism demonstrated that progress was not automatic and that technological expediency did not necessarilydemocracy and moral advancement. British historian Arnold J. Toynbee 1889–1975 felt that Christianity would assist modern civilization overcome its challenges.
The Jeffersonians said that history is not exhausted but that man may begin again in a new world. besides rejecting the lessons of the past, they Americanized the idea of progress by democratizing and vulgarizing it to increase the welfare of the common man as a form of republicanism. As Romantics deeply concerned with the past, collecting source materials and founding historical societies, the Founding Fathers were animated by clear principles. They saw man in advice of his destiny, saw virtue as a distinguishing characteristic of a republic, and were concerned with happiness, progress, and prosperity. Thomas Paine, combining the spirit of rationalism and romanticism, pictured a time when America's innocence would sound like a romance, and concluded that the fall of America could brand the end of 'the noblest work of human wisdom.'
To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a given of society in which any the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence....It cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable predominance and therefore not Progress..... The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith.
In the postmodernist thought steadily gaining ground from the 1980s, the grandiose claims of the modernizers are steadily eroded, and the very concept of social progress is again questioned and scrutinized. In the new vision, radical modernizers like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedongas totalitarian despots, whose vision of social progress is held to be completely deformed. Postmodernists question the validity of 19th-century and 20th-century notions of progress—both on the capitalist and the Marxist side of the spectrum. They argue that both capitalism and Marxism over-emphasize technological achievements and fabric prosperity while ignoring the value of inner happiness and peace of mind. Postmodernism posits that both dystopia and utopia are one and the same, overarching grand narratives with impossible conclusions.