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2 results

  • 10 - Towards an Uncertain Future

  • from Part II - Towards a World of Unlimited Possibilities
  • Peter J. Bowler, Queen's University Belfast
  • Book:
    Progress Unchained
    Published online:
    11 February 2021
    Print publication:
    04 March 2021, pp 248-266

  • Summary

    Thinkers who saw technological innovation as the way forward now had to accept that there could be no static utopia in the future: society would be in a continual state of change. There was an increased emphasis on thinking about the future rather than the past, since it was less clear that history offered a model by which future developments could be predicted. The hope of creating a planned society was replaced by the notion of the 'technological fix' that dealt with the often unanticipated by-products of innovations pioneered as beneficial. Futurology emerged as a discipline aimed at anticipating developments, although its efforts were often wide of the mark. Enthusiasts predicted a range of possible futures based on different technologies, some involving the move to a completely transhuman phase of life. Science fiction emerged as a genre providing commentary on these scenarios, often recognizing the potential disadvantages.

Progress Unchained
  • Ideas of Evolution, Human History and the Future
  • Peter J. Bowler
  • Published online:
    11 February 2021
    Print publication:
    04 March 2021
  • 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.