An Essay On Progress In Western Civilization

Synonyms for “progress”: development, growth, advancement, improvement, evolution, steps forward, movement

Introduction

“You know, all is development – the principle is perpetually going on. First there was nothing; then there was something; then – I forget the next – I think there were shells; then fishes; then we came – let me see – did we come next? Never mind, we came last and the next change will be something very superior to us, something with wings” Lady Constance in Disraeli’s novel Tancred, 1847.

“Progress” is a common enough word, used most often to speak of change for the better, or improvement, and relates most frequently to the advancements of the sciences and other physical accouterments of civilization. But we also speak of progress in the arts, in politics, social conventions and morality, but in these, progress relates more to change, since it is arguable as to the degree of betterment that accrues in these areas. The music of Beethoven, for example, represents a marked change from that of his predecessors (e. g. Bach, Handel, Mozart and Hayden, et al) and heralded the so-called Romantic period of music. But must we consider this change as progress? I believe that we must if it represented a new and better expression that music can convey in light of other attributes that were appearing in Western civilization at the time – an expression that was more closely related to the feelings, aspirations, beliefs of the community. There was an equivalent shift in painting at the time, as reflected in the works of Delacroix and Turner, both of which began the departure from classicism to romanticism, and in the case of Turner, impressionism. This period, beginning around 1800, also evidenced great changes in literary, political and philosophical systems as well as science. While the so-called modern era is often taken to have begun with the Enlightenment, the movements related to romanticism, were intertwined in ways that form a somewhat cohesive whole as regards progress. Western civilization gradually shifted from one milieu to another very different one, and the various gears of that shift were interrelated in complex ways across all Western societies.

Progress, therefore, should be seen as an integrated process, with multiple interconnections and influences, and not as a simple linear movement, as is more the case with specific science and engineering accomplishments. The way in which humans began to see their world and their connection to it and to other humans changed and with the seminal events of Darwin’s publications, Wagner’s music and the social/economic philosophy of Karl Marx, that period reached a kind of apex – i. e. the beginning of its decline. I cite these three men as exemplars and quote Jacques Barzun:

“¼after allowing for superficial differences, we find so many links uniting Darwinism, Marxism and Wagernism that the three doctrines can be seen as the crystallization of a whole century’s beliefs. Each of the systems may be likened to a few facets of that crystal: at the core they are indistinguishable.”

The movement ascribed to (or following) these men can be simplistically called materialism, even as that frequently has a bad name to many. Progress, during that period, was indeed one that was materialistic, and the idealism of the romantic age was slowly shucked off and replaced by another kind of idealism – the belief in the physical world as the only one worth paying serious attention to.

I use these three men somewhat arbitrarily, except for Darwin – his is a special case since his thesis of natural selection as the basis for change, speciation and, if you wish, progress among organisms, is itself perhaps the greatest example of there progressive nature of man’s theorizing. His formulations of natural progress itself exemplified progress in how we see our world; the jury may still be out as to the ultimate (if ever) structure of a “complete” and thus proven theory of evolution, but I see their deliberations as nearing an end. The use of Wagner is an attempt to bring into our thought on progress the question: Does art and expressiveness progress, or does it simply change? Stephen Jay Gould in his essay Up Against a Wall discusses the many arguments that surrounded dating the various cave painting of the Paleolithic age – some seeing a linear progression of style and accuracy of representation, but Gould doubting this, pointing out that a distant archaeologist upon finding a Michelangelo and a Picasso, would hard pressed to establish a linear progression of style, with no knowledge of the intervening art. So, ascribing progress to art is tricky, to say the least. But if one ties art, in general, to the other dimensions of society the various styles and intentions can be easily linked to what was going on in society. As for Marx, he attempted to grab by the throat what he considered to be a law of equity as relates to labor, value and goods in terms of class. What he witnessed in the societies he could witness was conflict, one possible ingredient for progress – conflict of the distribution of wealth as relates to how wealth is produced. Indeed, his theories were monumentally influential, in various forms for a very long time and cannot be considered as crackpot. He was instrumental in making us look at the conflict, even if our solutions have to date been less than fully successful.

Civilization progresses through three not mutually exclusive forces: need, conflict and exploration. All of these forces are seemingly aspects of our species; there are needs related to sustenance, shelter, procreation and defense (and more recently in the history of our species: expressiveness); there are conflicts over territory, beliefs and possessions, and there is exploration of geography, ideas and invention. There is hardly any progress or achievement by humanity that has not come about without one or all of these; (accidental discoveries that contribute to material progress do exist.) These are contrasted with change or evolution in nature (i. e. in the absence of human intentions) that are non-teleological, and the literature is awash with descriptions of the how’s and why’s of this process; it is to be strictly separable from human progress, even though we are a part of nature.

It is interesting to ponder how ancient man came about his inventions related to his needs, and brings up the cognitive processes involved. In his three stages of human development and progress, Auguste Comte assigned to our primitive forbears the belief in the gods to bring about change and explain earthly phenomena – the theological stage. The next stage, the metaphysical, assigned to phenomena some hidden force or power; and in the third stage, the positive or scientific, all phenomena are the result of laws of nature or physics, which may or may not be discoverable. While his chronology may be more or less accurate, he omits dealing with a stage that might have preceded his theological one – namely a stage during which man had no gods, but only a relatively undeveloped cognitive capability, and dealt with his world very much in the moment within a very narrow spectrum of challenge and change. Did the invention of the axe or eventually the spear and bow and arrow precede early man’s concept of gods? I think it probably did. Yet, even with a limited language (if any) he was able to perceive cause and effect to the degree necessary to make improvements and discoveries. Finding himself away from the naturally provided cave, he built huts. Finding the river too deep and swift to walk across, he rode on a log. Discovering that very sharp stones pierced the skin of prey more easily, he devised a way to make them sharp. Early man was a problem solver and his daily needs were the impetus for improvements, once he was able to perceive causality.

Progress, or improvement was related to an immediate need, one that may have existed unattended for some time, and there may have been much trial and error involved. But in any case, there was an objective in the process, and that objective was to accomplish something better – more quickly, more efficiently, more thoroughly and even more cheaply in terms of utilizing resources at hand. Today the same objectives apply in most cases, however there is a broader set of concerns at play in the society at large. Changes and improvements come about via a network of needs and capabilities. Bridge building in Taiwan is not unrelated to bridge building in the United States, since that technology is codified and connected world-wide through the interaction of people in various ways. In addition, bridge building is connected to the traffic that will use the bridges, and the vehicles have their own technologies, and the need for those vehicles vary widely. There exists today a vast network of interrelated needs and associated technologies that all go hand in hand to create opportunities for improvements – progress. This all began when societies had interlocked needs and solutions for those needs.

Progress in the Small

In today’s interconnected societies and material enterprises progress, as mentioned above, can be viewed from afar as a massive movement that includes cultural and scientific achievements, but each such achievement can be examined individually as progress in the small. Man’s early inventions are basically no different in this respect from current ones; there was a recognized need, the wherewithal at hand to effect improvement and possibly the other influences of conflict and exploration at work. But, in any case the singular improvement was the direct result of the human mind solving some problem arising from need. (As Karl Popper says: “All organisms are constant problem solvers; even though they are not conscious of the problems they are trying to solve.”) It involved using what was at hand to create something new – something that satisfied the need. In the case of a more effective tool for cutting up carcasses, the idea of piercing or sharpness became evident, though probably unnamed as such, thus one tool could be said to be sharper than its predecessor and thereby more useful. It perhaps can be said that the very concept of sharpness came about through its use, thus concepts grew out of utility and practice and eventually, tradition.

Over the hundred thousand or so years of homo sapiens existence as a species, a great many such concepts have arisen and eventually became part of the language and thought of our race. Even today, in the midst of almost daily findings in quantum physics, this repertoire of concepts is useful – as in the case of electron “spin” where spin is a concept that is a useful, though not exact concept, to distinguish a certain characteristic of electrons. No doubt this repertoire is growing still, both in the sciences and in cultures, and they are embedding themselves in our language and thinking. . As to the meaning of “concepts” I recall what Richard Feynman said of them: “Concept is a very strange concept.” I won’t debate the ontological or epistemological aspects of the word except to say that, whatever one may say about them, they are indispensable; causality may or may not have some ontic presence, but it is the sine qua non of all science and most of human intercourse. One can develop quite a long list of concepts which have been useful in scientific progress and invention – a few are:

weight

size

area

straightness

curvature

leverage

advantage

distance

greater than

smaller than

containment

balance

symmetry

etc.

For the most part this list, if extended to its fullest extent, form the basic set of cognitive tools used in invention, therefore in progress as for physical objects.

Another set is useful in discussing sociological change and advancements:

good

bad

evil

recompense

reward

equality

fairness

wealth

poverty

control

superiority

power

weakness

etc.

In the field of art, including literature sculpture and architecture (which is related to technology) we find concepts such as:

balance

symmetry

meaning

message

impact

content

proportions

imagination

fantasy

etc.

It is easy to picture all three sets being mixed in a potential palette for invention and for understanding and using invention and art and dealing with human interaction.

Another significant aspect of invention is that of bringing together disparate concepts, observations and facts to formulate a synthesis, thus a new construction to solves some need. The modern automobile is a prime example of the fusion of many concepts and realities in the world: the wheel, chemical combustion, metallurgy, mechanical advantages, processing of rubber, plastics, electricity, refinement of crude oil, etc. The transistor, perhaps the most influential invention of the 20th century (or ever) invented in 1948, came about through the knowledge of atomic structure and processing techniques of various metals. It replaced the thermionic vacuum tube, a bulky, heat producing, fragile and short lived device. A host of concepts were involved in the conception of the transistor, and today if all such devices were suddenly made ineffective or removed from the developed nations a monstrous devastation of civilized society would ensue. Progress in the small adds to progress in the large, as witnessed by the example of the transistor, and may have profound influence on society. It is by now a two-way street; the complexities of the modern world beg more and more improvements since the concepts and previous inventions at hand offer more and more opportunities for use.

The recent invention of cell-phones that take and transmit pictures has spawned the use of jammers which can thwart the use of cell phones by those nearby; those who wish to either not risk being photographed or are simply irritated at the use of the phones in their presence merely flip on their jammers. Similar equipment is used by speeders on the highway who wish to jam police radars. Thus we see technology chasing technology. No doubt the pilotless planes that are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually be jammed to diminish their efficacy in war. This points to warfare that is without soldiers on the ground, but an arsenal of robots fighting one another – technology at war with itself. Perhaps the good news might be that eventually wars will be fought only in and by computers. Is that progress?

Progress in the Large

Progress in the large means the full matrix of all of what may be called collective advancements in all human endeavors, be they scientific or cultural and artistic. The idea of the improvement of man and his domain is quite old, perhaps beginning with Plato and his utopian ideas about what a society and its governance should look like. All the concepts mentioned above, to Plato, would be considered as having a transcendent ontology that is independent of man, and that knowledge (as opposed to opinion) will lead mankind toward finding and using these concepts to his benefit. The idea of the perfect man, the man who has attained the pinnacle of developmental possibilities in this world was part of the Enlightenment and remains a part of most religions – man becoming perfect through contact with the perfect God. We see progress all around us every day, and may ask: Progress toward what? It is tempting to cast this issue in the same light as non-teleological nature; looked at from afar, we humans and our world might be seen as an integrated physical process that is moving in some direction without any specific directed vector, but with surety and apparent success. (More about success later) But all progresses in the small, which are surely quite purposeful, accumulate to become progress in the large; if progress in the small is purposeful, is not the accumulated result also purposeful? Perhaps the sheer complexity of our modern world belies this possibility, since predicting the future is undeniably impossible, and predictability is part of purposefulness. Undoubtedly no one in Newton’s day could predict all the technology involved in landing a human on the moon, and though science fiction is filled with a plethora of possible futures, the vagaries of human belief and the uncertainties of the physical world deny even the most seemingly prescient sci-fi writers the possibility of accurate predictions. So, progress toward what?

It has been said by both secular and religious philosophers that there is a vector for human progress – the pursuit of truth or of salvation. Truth in the understanding of the phenomenology of the physical universe and truth in the make up of human kind and the human mind. Regarding this, Frederick R. Karl, in his Modern and Modernism, says: “ By pursuing utility, we can arrive at truth; for, in fact, truth and utility are dependent on each other.” This is problematic, since “truth” is an abstraction (Plato aside) that has been invented by humans to help deal with the world, and is nowhere settled in the world of philosophy. However, it is settled in the world of science; truth is what works.

This brings us to success. Success normally relates to the achievement of an intended objective. Without teleology, there is no success, since there is no intended objective. Success in nature (sans human intervention and objectives) can arguably be considered the continued existence of a species. The shark has been around for sixty million years with scarcely any changes in its habits or morphology – does that mean it is a successful species simply due to its longevity? The fact that it has reached, to date, a state of stasis with regard to its environment might by some be considered as a successful achievement of its evolution. On the other hand, in lacking the stresses of changing environments and the ensuing process of selection through variation, it also might be considered to be not so much successful as evolutionarily dormant. We humans probably shy away from wishing such dormancy on ourselves since movement and change (for the “better”) is a continually desirable process. So, can we even speak of success in terms of reaching a kind of human developmental nirvana, in which we are secure and content with what we have and what we are? During Rousseau’s time, there was an enchanting fixation by some on the possibility of a society of primitively content humans, harkening back to the age of a simple life based on simple needs and simple solutions. Such a desire was short lived and went the way of many other utopian dreams; why? Probably because it is the nature of humans to change, to explore, to dream, to lack satisfaction with what is at hand and hold onto the idea of progress as the means to make a better life. While we can envision the Polynesians, without the rude interruption of the 18th century explorers, as having a stable and relatively peaceful existence with their fish and bananas, sexual freedom and easy going life style, we would, for a variety of reasons not exchange places with them. Why is this? They may be seen as having reached something akin to the developmental dormancy of the shark, the absence of external forces and changes in their environment resulting in a static culture. We “civilized” humans eschew this state.

Success, therefore, is a relative matter, and dependent on the presence or absence of the forces at work to induce change. But is change always progress? One can ask, with a perfectly straight face, if the life of the pre-explored Polynesians is less content than the life today of the stressed, worrying, in-debt middle class human, who must deal with a myriad of distracting influences and potential physical dangers. What is success? What is progress toward it?

Human nature is strange in this regard. The millionaire who has every conceivable material object required to fulfill his basic needs, often wants still more. While he is considered a success, he pictures success further down the road, when he has more of what he already has. Perhaps this condition is to be placed in the category of gluttony – a sin in the Christian faith. But his personal standard of success demands that he have more. A wonderful example of the dangers and pitfalls of this view of success is the recent prison term given to Sam Waxel, who headed up a successful pharmaceutical firm that produced new drugs. He was already a wealthy man, but upon hearing that the FDA had not approved a new drug his company had invented, he sold his stock in the company – what is called “insider trading” – and was severely punished. While in prison, ironically, the drug has since been approved and the stock is on the rise. Thus, the convolution of science and greed! Had he merely been patient, all would have worked out fine. Is Sam Waxel a success? The same question can be asked of any criminal who gets away with something and becomes rich. Is he a success?

But here we are concerned with society as a whole and what can be called a successful society, through progress. No one can have an accurate vision of the future, and therefore no one can define the sociological and scientific vector that will get us there, to some place where all is well for all humans, and perhaps the planet as well. But does that mean that we let progress take its own random walk to the future, hoping that by some law of human progress that naturally aims toward the “good” we will come out alright? For those who hold to the Platonic idea of “the good” they might also hold to the idea of the “right path” toward this “good.” If they are religious they might believe that the direction is governed by faith in God; if they are scientific they might believe that by understanding the universe and the human mind (pure materialism) we can choose the most efficacious vector to get us there – wherever and whatever there is. Of course there are others, myself included, who hold that things will proceed as they will, much like nature itself, inexorably moving toward something inexplicable and unknown, and that we should not fret about it – it will, and must, happen without guidance.

But there is a kind of guidance. The critical issue is, what kind of guidance exists in this many-sided society with all the various forces pulling us this way and that? There are those, like the descendents of the Newtonian age, who believe that the inexorable laws of nature and of physics, once discovered and harnessed, will open the doors to the true and beneficent abode for humanity. But we must think of the consequences of even getting close to the age in which we have conquered all disease and infirmities, fed all the hungry, done away with poverty and mental illness, eradicated bigotry, become one people under one sway of a consummately benign government – will we have attained the evolutionary stasis of the shark, with no forces acting upon us to further change and “progress?” Is it in our human make up to be satisfied with such a status? I don’t think so, but then I cannot imagine myself in such a place.

Yes, there is guidance in our progress, but we have no idea of what that guidance consists - - it is the sum total of all separate individual bits and pieces of progress that go on each day, and none of us is capable of wrapping our conceptual arms around the meaning and direction of this progress. It seems to me that the ingredients of this progress is the sum of all concepts that comprise the tools of progress, and they are legion. We have become a species of concepts, some in conflict, others in harmony, but all tending toward an inexorable movement toward something we know not of. If we deny that there is some law of human progress, divine or not, and are left with a yawning abyss of random direction we may sink into some existential angst; if we believe that there is such a law, unless this is believed by all or most, then it is of little value and we are left with the same old brand of conflicts among us.

A Confluence of Progresses

I mentioned Darwin, Marx and Wagner, following Barzun’s use of these as exemplars of an age, for a reason. We may separate them out as three disparate tentacles of societal functions, but they feed on one another in very interesting ways and conspire to form a whole in terms of seeing not only how but why societies take the directions they do. The pinnacle of romanticism as personified in Wagner was not only a pinnacle, but it was a repudiation of what it embodied in the sense that it took romanticism to the edge and shoved it over. Wagner cannot be taken as a serious commentator on his age, but he can be taken seriously as a force for change. (Music so-called “classical” or “serious” still shows the influence of Wagner.) The gods are dead, and those gods are the gods of righteous surety, of prescriptions for morality, of dead and dying styles. All of Wager is climactic – not introductory. While it may touch one’s emotions in terms of the sheer force of the music, it also leaves one with an emptiness – a sense of the tragic and of loss. Darwin, a somewhat unwilling representative of the overthrow of creationism and a God-directed natural order, was as much a ringer of the death knell of order as he was the harbinger of a new kind of order – that was, in fact, uncertainty. If chance mutations were the cause of speciation and the eventual arrival of humans, the God of Moses must be replaced with the god of chance. This startling suggestion remained only that until the advent of quantum physics wherein it is demonstrated that uncertainty is one of the hallmarks of microphysics and a serious element in understanding the world and the universe. Marx, seeing a new formula for establishing what the meaning of value is in human intercourse, summed up (not invented) the accumulation of opinions long since held regarding what is significant in managing the affairs among men in terms of labor and the exchange of goods related to that labor. He attempted to level the playing field in terms of what progress means for the individual but more importantly, for the group, the state. He believed, as opposed to the beliefs of the Utopians of his day, that a new society built on the laws he envisioned regarding value and labor cannot be invented and enforced by fiat, but must come about naturally through an inexorable revolution that is an organic component of mankind once emancipated from old thinking. Of course he was wrong in this – there appears to be nothing that is inexorable except movement and change, a system that seemingly guides itself. Each of these three dealt with change in the way humans view themselves and their world, and they are connected in both bold and subtle ways.

In looking at where we are today in terms of the three headings of art, science and social order and management, the canvas is large and the colors wild, but there are changes worth mentioning. No longer can we look up to great paintings such as those by Delacroix, David and Goya as depictions of what humanity is doing to itself, because there appears to be no single social force, led by but one or a very few leaders, and no large single event that dominates our fears and hopes, and no heroes. We see terrorists, enthralled with religious fervor using cell phones – the merging of technology with outdated fundamentalist religious beliefs. We see art created and displayed via complex and expensive technology and obtained at the touch of a button. We see political persuasions through the medium of television that uses the “art” of propaganda to make us think a certain way. We no longer witness the rise of great leaders and heroes who, in an earlier age might be painted on large canvases and hung in museums where they can affect public opinion. We see the advance of medical technology not only in increasing our longevity, but being used to augment and alter our physical appearances, making us conform to some ideal human morphology. We see art and music scattered into a plethora of styles that do not represent an age or social milieu as much as a chaos of outlooks that pervade society. The common thread through most of this scene is technology, and it seems that not only is society today dependent on technology, it is dependent on its continued advance – its continued progress. There is no walk of life today that is not affected in profound ways by technology, and if there is a vector that aims in some direction, that vector is nowadays bound up by technology. Technology in robotics is increasingly casting Marx’ s labor/value concepts even more in doubt as the paradigm for desirable social order, since we can easily envision human physical labor vanishing altogether, leaving humans to rely solely on their brain and the computer, activities that are easily accomplished away from any concentration of labor at factories, etc. “Intellectual property” is replacing physical property – nowadays most would much rather own a lucrative patent than a acre of land.

Progress today can be seen as an amalgam of interrelated activities that all have the common substrate of technology. Even the most cerebral of activities, writing, is being influenced by the advent of word processing with its spell check and instant availability of reference material via the internet. Some writers claim that using word processing, e-mail and the internet has altered the way they think and pursue their craft. The most dominant art forms, movies and television, have become completely taken over by and dependent on technology. The sociological influence of the steam engine in the 19th century can’t hold a candle to that of current technology (begun with the transistor in 1948).

So, progress toward what? If one were to ask that question of anyone within one of the sciences, no matter which one, I have the feeling the answer would always be the same: A solution to the problem I face at the moment. This problem and its surrounding complexities will always be a complete mystery to laity. All of science and technology is, for the most part, a mystery to the vast majority of those who benefit from them. This situation can be likened to ancient or so-called primitive societies in which fire was used and depended on but not understood and perhaps even worshiped; Western society today is being structured by a group who might as well be gods in this regard. The vector of progression is a large and diverse one, but it is at least confined to a group who are intensely involved in solving their particular problem within their particular niche. There are no Marx’s or Darwin’s in the mix for whom progress is a global and monolithic matter, there are no giants of political, artistic, scientific or economic vision. The doctor in medical research, though he may have tucked away in his mind some far reaching utopian concept of a disease- free world, is mainly dedicated to solving the specific problem at hand – possibly the cure for a specific pathology. The world and its scientific milieu is far too large and complex for a visionary to wrap his arms around it as a messiah for the true path for the future through progress.

Conclusions

“Every step the mind takes in its progress toward knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best, too, for the time at least.” John Locke

“Science tends to be difficult, subtle, ambiguous, and biased by all manner of social and psychic prejudice – though surely directed in a general way toward increasingly better understanding of a real world ‘out there’” Stephen Jay Gould

Perhaps the metaphor of a random walk is appropriate – there is progress, but the compass points are irrelevant or nonexistent, and the path may re-cross itself from time to time. Today, to some degree, we see a return, if it can be called that, of more “classical” art in painting and sculpture, as if there is a kind of magnetic pull toward representing the world accurately, perhaps in reaction to a century of artistic chaos. The clash of cultures, or in some minds of civilizations, as indicated by the conflict between Islam and Western ideologies and religions harkens back to the attempted intrusion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe, and even the Crusades – the issues dividing Islam from the West having only simmered the past few hundred years. So what’s new? What is undeniably new is the geometric explosion of science and technology and the resulting impact it is having on daily life in the developed nations of the world. What is not new is the fact recurring global conflict based on a variety of causes – religion being not the least of these. While we find cures for disease and build spacecraft capable of going to Mars, giant airplanes and huge ocean going ships, develop complex communication and entertainment systems, we have not conquered conflicts within the human psyches and between them. Wars of the 20th century were the most brutal and life-taking in our history. Drugs are being designed to deal with depression, what used to be called melancholia and hysteria and is yet to be fully understood. We see a unique kind of human progress at work, technologies that will someday do away with human physical labor, leaving us to depend on our cognitive powers alone, our hands used only on the keyboard, and eventually not even that. If there is a directional vector to our progress it is one that is gradually tending toward nothing but the use of the mind, and that mind has yet to be understood. The internet is also doing new things to human interaction; it provides both free-wheeling conversations that may or may not be honest or accurate in terms of one’s status or nature, and at the same time it offers us the ability to speak freely and honestly with little consequences. The “delete” button accomplishes now what more and less subtle means of the termination of conversations existed in the past. For some, this is an isolating process, for others it is an expanding one, since we can make acquaintances around the globe and come in contact with other views at the touch of our keyboard.

The apparent random walk of our progress, while not entirely random, due to technology, remains a mysterious walk – over the next hill, through unexplored forests, as if seeking something we cannot comprehend, or perhaps fleeing that which we find dangerous or ugly. Our progress is apparently inexorable, but its goal does not exist. We witnessed at the end of the 19th what was labeled “the absurd,” following Darwin’s revelations about our development as having been the result of chance mutations. The theory of quantum physics, particularly Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, and Godel’s undecidability theorem which proved there were flaws in our most basic axiomatic system of integer mathematics, conspired to cut us loose from the assumed solidarity of Newton’s mechanistic universe as well as from our belief that there was such a thing as iron-clad predictability and certainty in the world. Freud’s expose of our unconscious mind instilled in us the frightening knowledge that a great deal is going on in our minds than we cannot be aware of, and recent studies in the neurosciences enforce this fact.

It must not be forgotten that progress and its synonyms are themselves abstract concepts we have invented for ease of explanation in dealing with the world and our social interactions in it. An alien creature, upon discovering out planet and our civilization with all its monuments to our physical progress, might deem the whole thing as simply another non-teleological enterprise of matter, and if we could communicate, it is problematic as to whether the alien would then change its mind.

We shy away from being called animals, and yet, with all the trappings of science and technology, we remain animals, and as we watch the deer roaming across the valley or the eagle circling in the sky, we too wander and circle. We know that animals, in their movements are either fleeing predation, seeking sustenance or procreation; perhaps in our own way we are doing the same.

Richard E. Sansom