Download or read book History of the Idea of Progress written by Robert Nisbet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of progress from the Enlightenment to postmodernism is still very much with us. In intellectual discourse, journals, popular magazines, and radio and talk shows, the debate between those who are "progressivists" and those who are "declinists" is as spirited as it was in the late seventeenth century. In History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet traces the idea of progress from its origins in Greek, Roman, and medieval civilizations to modern times. It is a masterful frame of reference for understanding the present world. Nisbet asserts there are two fundamental building blocks necessary to Western doctrines of human advancement: the idea of growth, and the idea of necessity. He sees Christianity as a key element in both secular and spiritual evolution, for it conveys all the ingredients of the modern idea of progress: the advancement of the human race in time, a single time frame for all the peoples and epochs of the past and present, the conception of time as linear, and the envisagement of the future as having a Utopian end. In his new introduction, Nisbet shows why the idea of progress remains of critical importance to studies of social evolution and natural history. He provides a contemporary basis for many disciplines, including sociology, economics, philosophy, religion, politics, and science. History of the Idea of Progress continues to be a major resource for scholars in all these areas.
Download or read book A Short History of Progress written by Ronald Wright and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2004 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water — the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.
Download or read book Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico written by Edward Beatty and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, Mexican citizens quickly adopted new technologies imported from abroad to sew cloth, manufacture glass bottles, refine minerals, and provide many goods and services. Rapid technological change supported economic growth and also brought cultural change and social dislocation. Drawing on three detailed case studies—the sewing machine, a glass bottle–blowing factory, and the cyanide process for gold and silver refining—Edward Beatty explores a central paradox of economic growth in nineteenth-century Mexico: while Mexicans made significant efforts to integrate new machines and products, difficulties in assimilating the skills required to use emerging technologies resulted in a persistent dependence on international expertise.
Download or read book The Idea of Progress written by John Bagnell Bury and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Racketeer s Progress written by Andrew Wender Cohen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-03 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Racketeer's Progress explores the contested and contingent origins of the modern American economy by examining the violent resistance to its development. Historians often portray Chicago as an unregulated industrial metropolis, composed of factories and immigrant labourers. In fact, the city was home to thousands of craftsmen - carpenters, teamsters, barbers, butchers, etc. - who formed unions and associations that governed commerce through pickets, assaults, and bombings. Working together, these groups forcefully challenged the power of national corporations and physically managed the development of mass culture in the city."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Idea of Progress written by Sidney Pollard and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1971 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Short History of Man written by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline represents nothing less than a sweeping revisionist history of mankind, in a concise and readable volume. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe skillfully weaves history, sociology, ethics, and Misesian praxeology to present an alternative — and highly challenging — view of human economic development over the ages. As always, Dr. Hoppe addresses the fundamental questions as only he can. How do family and social bonds develop? Why is the concept of private property so vitally important to human flourishing? What made the leap from a Malthusian subsistence society to an industrial society possible? How did we devolve from aristocracy to monarchy to social democratic welfare states? And how did modern central governments become the all-powerful rulers over nearly every aspect of our lives? Dr. Hoppe examines and answers all of these often thorny questions without resorting to platitudes or bowdlerized history. This is Hoppe at his best: calmly and methodically skewering sacred cows.
Download or read book Power and Progress written by Alexander Green and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-09-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosopher and biblical commentator Joseph Ibn Kaspi (1280–1345) was a provocative Jewish thinker of the medieval era whose works have generally been overlooked by modern scholars. Power and Progress by Alexander Green is the first book in English to focus on a central aspect of his work: Ibn Kaspi's philosophy of history. Green argues that Ibn Kaspi understood history as guided by two distinct but interdependent forces: power and progress, both of which he saw manifest in the biblical narrative. Ibn Kaspi discerned that the use of power to shape history is predominantly seen in the political competition between kingdoms. Yet he also believed that there is historical progress in the continuous development and dissemination of knowledge over time. This he derived from the biblical vision of the divine chariot and its varied descriptions across different biblical texts, each revealing more details of a complex, multifaceted picture. Although these two concepts of what drives history are separate, they are also reliant upon one another. National survival is dependent on the progress of knowledge of the order of nature, and the progress of knowledge is reliant on national success. In this way, Green reveals Ibn Kaspi to be more than a mere commentator on texts, but a highly innovative thinker whose insights into the subtleties of the Bible produced a view of history that is both groundbreaking and original.
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book An Age of Progress written by Walter G. Moss and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2008-05-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘An Age of Progress?’ is an advanced examination of major twentieth-century global developments regarding subjects as diverse as violence, capitalism, socialism and communism, imperialism, racism, nationalism, westernization, globalization, international finance, freedom and human rights, physical and mental environmental changes, culture, science, education, religion and social criticism. This momentous study also explores the ways in which the twentieth century made significant progress – and the ways in which it did not.
Download or read book A Culture of Growth written by Joel Mokyr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture--the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior--was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500-1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the "Republic of Letters" freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China's version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.
Download or read book History in Progress 1603 1901 written by Nichola Boughey and published by Heinemann Secondary. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History in Progress features clearly differentiated tasks that are designed to support and encourage the progression of pupils of all ability levels. A wealth of stimulating activities and accessible information will motivate your pupils and fill them with confidence, whilst building the key historical skills necessary for GCSE.
Download or read book Modern Progress and History written by James Joseph Walsh and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book End of History and the Last Man written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
Download or read book Thatcher s Progress written by Guy Ortolano and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horizons -- Planning -- Architecture -- Community -- Consulting -- Housing.
Download or read book The Story of Modern Progress 1920 written by Willis M. West and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Story of Modern Progress, 1920: With a Preliminary Survey of Earlier Progress Mr Modem History, of eighteen years ago, and its successor, The Modem World, taught insistently and, for long in rather lonely fashion, the perils in Prussian militarism and autocracy. In 1902, when worship of Bismarckian "efficiency" was at its height in America and England, after presenting details, I ventured to sum up this matter thus (Modem History, page 477): The story of the making of Germany shows plainly enough that the process was one not merely of "blood and iron" but also of fraud and falsehood. It is hard to tell the story of such gigantic and successful audacity and craft without seeming to glorify it... Bismarck's success has tended too, probably, to lower the tone of international morality; and his policy of fraud and violence has left to Germany a legacy of burning questions which will grieve it long. The rule of the drill-sergeant and of the police officer, the hostility to the Empire felt by the Danes of Sleswig and the French of Alsace-Lorraine, the bitter jealousy between Prussia and Bavaria, and the immense armies of all Europe are among the results of his policy. It 18 too early yet to say that that policy is truly victorious. Because of this anti-Prussianism, the book suffered heavily in the years before the war from both open and secret pro-German attacks. But when the war came, no hurried revision was necessary to justify the volume to American schools. Nor is any change of attitude on these matters needed now. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Download or read book The Pricing of Progress written by Eli Cook and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Americans come to quantify their society’s well-being in units of money? In our GDP-run world, prices are the measure of not only goods and commodities but our environment, communities, nation, even self-worth. Eli Cook shows how, and why, we moderns lost sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.
