Re: Open Ed Challenge

Fred said:

Possibility of Progress.--When a master of the old civilization vows to
hold no more discussion with men who believe in progress, he is quite
right. For the old civilization has its greatness and its advantages
behind it, and historic training forces one to acknowledge that it can
never again acquire vigor: only intolerable stupidity or equally
intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this fact. But men may
consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization where formerly
they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now devise
better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth
as an economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of
men and select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is
killing the other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective
animal and plant life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress
itself--progress is possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost
unreflective to assume that progress must necessarily take place: but
how can it be doubted that progress is possible? On the other hand,
progress in the sense and along the lines of the old civilization is
not even conceivable. If romantic fantasy employs the word progress
in connection with certain aims and ends identical with those of the
circumscribed primitive national civilizations, the picture presented
of progress is always borrowed from the past. The idea and the image
of progress thus formed are quite without originality.

-- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38145/38145-h/38145-h.htm
(Of First and Last Things, section 24), cf.
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/scientism-1-of-5/