Integrating Conceptions of Human Progress

Rick Szostak

Abstract: This paper applies interdisciplinary techniques toward the investigation of the idea of human progress. It argues that progress needs to be considered with respect to an ethical evaluation of a host of different phenomena. Some of these have displayed progress in human history, others regress, and still others neither. It is argued that it is possible to achieve progress on all fronts in the future, but only if we engage constructively with the true complexity of the world we inhabit. Classification is seen as a critical complement to interdisciplinary analysis.