This
is the appearance of the idea that humankind has always progressed,
sometimes at a faster, sometimes at a slower pace, through history. As
Laukhard observes, the idea seems to have been independently conceived
of in France and Germany, with slightly different features.
Laukhard’s regret that all analogies fall away with these schemes
of historiography is exactly the regret of someone educated in the 18th
century Enlightenment circles and is a sharp observation of one of the
main features of the progress scheme: The anthropological perspective
becomes impossible.
4 Perhaps with some
modifications this scheme of historiography is still very much alive
today. Therefore, we will return to its origins, how it was formulated
and with what arguments, how it has changed – and then return
again.
5.1 The title of an early essay
by K.H.L. Pölitz (1795) is clear enough: Sind wir berechtigt, eine
größere künftige Aufklärung und höhere Reife
unsers Geschlechts zu erwarten? His answer is affirmative. How much
Pölitz – contrary to Condorcet, see infra – tries to
propose a translation from the religious to the secular is quite
obvious:
Der übersinnliche Theil des
Menschen ist also unsterblich, d.h. er ist zu einer unendlichen
Fortdauer bestimmt; so wie nun die Unsterblichkeit selbst sich nur als
Mittel verhält zur Erreichung des letzten Zwekkes der menschlichen
Natur, und wir nur insofern unsterbliche Wesen sind und seyn
können, inwiefern in uns Anlagen vorhanden sind, die grenzenlos
entwikkelt und vervollkommt werden sollen; so müssen auch mit ihr
zugleich dem Menschen alle die wesentlichen Bedingungen gegeben werden,
unter welche jener Zwek der Fortschritts einzig und am sichersten
erreicht werden kann.
(4)
Taking up Kant’s philosophy, with plain overtones from Fichte and
Schelling, Pölitz deduces the apriori conditions under which a
culture can evolve. Partly these are material and finite, partly these
are spiritual and infinite. These last ones, the spiritual abilities of
man, are bounded (man cannot do everything), but, Pölitz argues,
they are capable of infinite perfectibility. When applied to the
material conditions of culture, the perpetual progress of culture
becomes a self-evident deduction.
5.2 Pölitz’s arguments regarding the material conditions of
culture are partially outdated, pointing to the political revolutions
of his days, but partially still ’valid’ (i.e. reproducable
as an argument) today:
Der Kreis der Erfahrungen hat sich erweitert.
Die Völker sind sich näher gerückt.
Die Wissenschaften haben eine tiefere Begründung gewonnen.
Die Erziehung ist zu einem höheren Grade fortgeführet worden.
Summarised: The amount of information has grown, its transmission has
improved, its scientific processing is better and the technical
abilities to do so are transmitted to everybody thanks to general
education.
(5)
6.1 Exactly these preconditions
for the thesis of progress are more fully developed by the Marquis de
Condorcet, who, ironically, wrote his book
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progr`es de l’esprit humain while in prison. The main thesis is:
montrer, par le raisonnement et par les
faits, qu’il n’a été marqué aucun
terme au perfectionnement des facultés humaines; ...; que les
progrès de cette perfectibilité désormais
indépendante de toute puissance qui voudroit les arrêter,
n’ont d’autre terme que la durée du globe où
la nature nous a jetés. Sans doute, ces progrès pourront
suivre une marche plus ou moins rapide, mais jamais elle ne sera
rétrograde
(6)
An important corollary to the progress thesis is introduced here: There
cannot be a retrograde movement, we can only advance in exploiting our
human faculties.
6.2 Contrary to the idealistic
schemes of Pölitz, who classifies the phases in the history of
mankind according the the preponderance of Sinne, Gemüth and
Vernunft respectively, Condorcet more clearly brings the main stages of
human development in connection with a technological innovation. The
invention of (alphabetic) writing marks an epoch, the proliferation and
specialisation of science in ancient Greece and Rome, the further
development of science during the Renaissance, the arrival of printing
and the last stage, 'De Descartes jusqu’à la formation de
la République françoise’ – the consequence of
this lineage is telling.
(7) This brings out one of
the strongest arguments for a history of perpetual progression: The
impact, growth and penetration of communication between people, based
on novel technologies, has indeed expanded and/or accelerated.
7.1 One plain advantage of this
historiographic scheme is reduction. Instead of the panorama of many
tribes and various times a much simpler narration becomes possible.
il est nécessaire de choisir
[les faits de l’histoire] dans celles de différens
peuples, de les rapprocher, de les combiner, pour en tirer
l’histoire hypothétique d’un peuple unique, et
former le tableau de ses progrès.
(8)
Die Philosophie soll daher für die Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit
nichts als einen Maasstab darbieten ...sie gewinnt denn die Resultate
über das, was jedes Zeitalter, jedes Volk, jedes Individuum ...
geleistet hat. Am Ende dieser Resultate wird sich denn auch ein
Ueberblick über das Ganze daraus ergeben.
(9)
Not unlike the monocausal scheme of myths, where gods act upon nature,
(10) this scheme of progress brings all histories in a linear, if not ’transcendental’ perspective
(11) – a compression of the mass of data.
7.2 This feature of compression
is in immediate correspondence with the development of communication
devices. When the amount of information and the rate of its
transmission grows, techniques of compression and reduction are wanted,
just to be able to do something with these informations. The paradox of
a history of indefinite progress is therefore this: The more progress
in the development of human faculties (in the quantitative, though not
necessarily qualitative sense), the more specialised this knowledge
becomes, the less people have access to it or the less people can still
have an overview. An uncertainty relationship marks the circulation of
knowledge in a society: The larger the amount or the faster the
velocity of information transmissable, the smaller the group of
recipients who can still operate on this information. Moreover, these
groups of recipients are more or less mutually exclusive groups. A
group able to operate on one corpus of information will most likely be
unable to operate upon another body of knowledge, accessible in
practice only to another group. The history of the world as a linear
progression in the perfection of human abilities therefore splinters to
pieces, a patchwork of groups who locally can manage some information.
7.3 This is one instance of
what may be called an incommensurability of communication, because the
communication amongst mutually exclusive groups may become near
impossible. In the realm of everyday experience they may communicate
(common speech is remarkably strong in this regard, though often
despised because it conveys ’no information’ –
q.e.d.!?), in the realm of their specialised knowledges only great
efforts can achieve communication. This is the prize to pay for a
highly detailed and specialised discourse, its transmission has to deal
with strict boundary conditions, with limitations. However, the fallacy
of the progress thesis lies not in the fact that an uncertainty
relationship undermines its premisses, but in the nature of
communication. It is never monocausal – neither is our everyday
life – and can only become so through enforcing strict
transmission conditions.
8.1 Around 1900 a new variant
of the progress thesis is proposed. Acting on the paradoxes already
stated, the progress of humankind was no longer a global or universal
phaenomenon, but got limited to one specific activity of mankind:
Science. Until our present day (we write 2006) it is for many people
still a firm conviction - nay, belief - that all sciences, and
mathematics in particular, are cumulative, i.e., the body of knowledge
these sciences organise, can only grow, both in breadth and depth. This
knowledge may perhaps get reorganised or revolutionised, but its
conquests can never be forgotten, nor its structure and parts decrease
in information content.
8.2 Curiously enough, this
variant of the progress thesis has firm gnostic overtones. In
Gnosticism it is believed, that a God created the universe, but than
gradually retreated from it (
deus absconditus),
leaving behind realms further and further removed from the original
creation. Something like this echoes in Sarton’s words:
If the history of science is a secret
history, then the history of mathematics is doubly secret, a secret
within a secret, for the growth of mathematics is unknown not only to
the general public, but even to scientific workers. Yet that secret
activity is fundamental; it is all the time creating new theories,
which sooner or later will set new wheels moving, new machines working,
or, better still, will enable us to obtain a deeper understanding of
the mechanism of the universe.
(12)
In contrast with Gnosticism, God is not absent, but Science is present
in the world. However, Mathematics communicates its conquests only to a
select few, who communicate their results to a somewhat larger group of
scientists, who then again inform engineers &c. who than build
machines and other devices that change the destiny of the whole of
humankind. This is the gnostic version of the progress of mankind.
8.3 Taking this philosophy of
history to its present extreme, the Gnostic Universe has expanded to
the point, that, wheels within wheels, an even more select group of,
let’s say, set theorists, number theorists or perhaps
topologists, or more specialised fields are at the heart of
mathematics, who are at the heart of &c. Actually, mathematics
having lost somewhat its aura of being a leading discipline (
Leitdisziplin),
perhaps some geneticist or nanotechnology specialist may claim
residence at the heart of all secret sciences guiding the universe. In
this respect, may the fallacy of the progress thesis lie in the
intricacies of communication (see 7.2 & 7.3), it nevertheless
exposes itself but all too bluntly when taken to its extreme.
9 As it is said in an interview with Cabaret Voltaire:
- Repetition, that was the big thing.
- Yeah, we’ve only ever got one idea.
- And I don’t remember what it was.
(1) M. Granet (1934):
La pensée chinoise. Bibliothèque de Synthèse historique, l’Evolution de l’Humanité, Paris, 68.
(2) In this regard, see, e.g., C.M. Wieland (1770/1795):
Reise des Priesters Abulfauaris ins innere Afrika & Bekenntnisse des Priesters Abulfauaris. In:
Sämtliche Werke, Teil V, Band 15, 1–66. And particularly recommended: A. v. Knigge (1791):
Benjamin
Noldmann’s Geschichte der Aufklärung in Abyssinien, oder
Nachricht von seinem und seins Herrn Vetters Aufenthalte an dem Hofe
des großen Negus, oder Priesters Johannes. Göttingen, Dieterich.
(3) F. Laukhard (1796):
Leben und Schicksale, Teil II, Band 3. Leipzig: Fleischer, 315-16
(4) K. H. L. Poelitz (1797): ’Ueber die letzten
Principien der Philosophie, und ber das daraus resultirende Princip zu
einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit’,
Deutsches Magazin, 13 & 14 (3, 4 & 1), 405-462, 543–593 & 28–66, here 32.
(5) In the sense of: everybody has a right to
education, and, the content of education is a general one, not only
limited to, e.g., religion. This kind of education was still rare in
the 18th century and only got gradually realised in the 19th century -
and it must be said, that exactly the philosophers defending the
progress of mankind, Condorcet and les idéologues in France,
Fichte in Germany, contributed much to putting this general education
on the political agenda.
(6) M. de Condorcet (1795):
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Agasse, Paris, here p. 4.
(7) It must be noted that this scheme very nearly resembles the one by Fichte in his
Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (1804), in
Fichtes Werke,
VII, 1–256. Fichte may, however, have been influenced by
Condorcet, since his work was already translated into German 1796 by
Posselt.
(8) Condorcet,
Esquisse, 13.
(9) Pölitz, ’Prinzipien’, 54.
(10) And which got into a crisis through the
introduction of writing, that introduced the possibility of more
complex, pluricausal explanation schemes – As Havelock argued,
cfr. E. Havelock (1965):
Preface to Plato. Yale University Press, New Haven.
(11) The term transcendental perspective was used by
J.H. Lambert, to indicate the possibility of a synthetic overview of
different interpretations. However, Lambert very much doubted that such
a perspective could be achieved, except in simple and limited cases.
(12) G. Sarton (1936
): The Study of the History of Mathematics. Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 8–9.