Bowler, Peter J. (Author)
Progress Unchained reinterprets the history of the idea of progress using parallels between evolutionary biology and changing views of human history. Early concepts of progress in both areas saw it as the ascent of a linear scale of development toward a final goal. The 'chain of being' defined a hierarchy of living things with humans at the head, while social thinkers interpreted history as a development toward a final paradise or utopia. Darwinism reconfigured biological progress as a 'tree of life' with multiple lines of advance not necessarily leading to humans, each driven by the rare innovations that generate entirely new functions. Popular writers such as H. G. Wells used a similar model to depict human progress, with competing technological innovations producing ever-more rapid changes in society. Bowler shows that as the idea of progress has become open-ended and unpredictable, a variety of alternative futures have been imagined.
...More
Book
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2003)
Evolution: The History of an Idea
(/isis/citation/CBB000410944/)
Article
Hale, Piers J.;
(2010)
Of Mice and Men: Evolution and the Socialist Utopia. William Morris, H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw
(/isis/citation/CBB000933103/)
Chapter
Ruse, Michael;
(2010)
Evolution and the Idea of Social Progress
(/isis/citation/CBB001020305/)
Chapter
Lefèvre, Wolfgang;
(2003)
Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress: Materialism and Views of Development in Nineteenth-Century Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB000430211/)
Book
Lessl, Thomas M.;
(2012)
Rhetorical Darwinism: Religion, Evolution, and the Scientific Identity
(/isis/citation/CBB001251137/)
Article
Esposito, Maurizio;
(2011)
Utopianism in the British Evolutionary Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001023985/)
Chapter
Jones, Steve;
(2010)
The Evolution of Utopia
(/isis/citation/CBB001023134/)
Article
Novoa, Adriana;
(2009)
The Act or Process of Dying Out: The Importance of Darwinian Extinction in Argentine Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB000932754/)
Article
Chris Manias;
(2017)
Progress in life's history: Linking Darwinism and palaeontology in Britain, 1860–1914
(/isis/citation/CBB426710736/)
Chapter
Somerset, Richard;
(2005)
Darwinian “Becoming” and Early Nineteenth-Century Historiography: The Cases of Jules Michelet and Thomas Carlyle
(/isis/citation/CBB000772008/)
Book
Ian Hesketh;
(2022)
Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB117113747/)
Article
Xiaoxing Jin;
(2020)
The Evolution of Evolutionism in China, 1870–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB453375389/)
Article
Jiang, Gongcheng;
Luo, Yuming;
(2004)
Pan Guangdan and Evolutionism in China
(/isis/citation/CBB000401217/)
Book
Jones, Andrew F.;
(2011)
Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001212356/)
Chapter
Jones, Greta;
(2004)
Darwinism in Ireland
(/isis/citation/CBB000401124/)
Article
Amir Mohammad Gamini;
(2015-2016)
Encountering Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the Qajar Period: Muḥammad Riḍā Iṣfahānī and Human Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB733031980/)
Article
Grumsen, Stine;
(2009)
Den stærkeste overleverer---Et studie af en litteraturhistorisk myte om darwinismen i Danmark
(/isis/citation/CBB001022222/)
Article
Levit, Georgy S.;
Hossfeld, Uwe;
Olsson, Lennart;
(2014)
The Darwinian Revolution in Germany: From Evolutionary Morphology to the Modern Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001500033/)
Article
Kyriakou, Kyriakos;
Skordoulis, Constantine;
(2010)
The Reception of Ernest Haeckel's Ideas in Greece
(/isis/citation/CBB001220617/)
Book
Javier Pérez-Jara;
Lino Camprubí;
(2022)
Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell: A Cultural Sociology
(/isis/citation/CBB059801832/)
Be the first to comment!