History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

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Ronald Wright's Construction of the Past: A Short History of Progress with a Partisan Agenda
Absolutely well-written and thought-provoking
An excellent author and an excellent book
Short History of Progress
A sign of the times

A Short History of Progress
Ronald Wright
Manufacturer: Carroll & Graf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas
The Heritage of World Civilizations: Volume One to 1700 (7th Edition) (Heritage of World Civilizations)
God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now
Changes in the Land, Revised Edition: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
A Short History Of Progress: 2004 Massey Lecture (Ideas)

ASIN: 0786715472

From Amazon.ca

No hope, just an awareness of what's being done now and what's been done in the past, is what Ronald Wright will permit in A Short History of Progress, his grim, ammoniacal Massey Lectures, the 43rd in the series. In five lucid, meticulously documented essays, Wright traces the rise and plummet of four regional civilizations--those of Sumer, Rome, Easter Island, and the Maya--and judges that most, perhaps all, of humanity is making and will continue to make mistakes equally disastrous as theirs. He gives general reasons first for not reckoning we'll pull back from the brink. Important among them is an anthropological observation. As individuals, we live long lives. We evolve more slowly than we should, given our lack of vision and our aggressive, selfish nature. We seem to lack the collective wisdom and the insight into cause and effect to realize the limits to what Wright calls the "experiment" of civilization. What Wright calls natural "subsidies" underwrite civilizations' successes. The squandering of those gifts presages inevitable failure, but with careful, canny stewardship, a civilization can manage to muddle through eons. Wright cites Egypt's submission to the limits set by the Nile's annual floods and China's windblown "lump-sum deposit" of topsoil, used for hillside paddies instead of being put to the plough. Wright observes with unrelenting eloquence that our planetary civilization lives precariously, far beyond its means. "Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes," he acknowledges, neither claiming nor wanting to be a prophet. We certainly have the tools for change and remediation; we also know what our ancestors did wrong and what happened to them. We're faced, our author observes, with two choices: either do nothing--what he calls "one of the biggest mistakes"--or try to effect "the transition from short-term to long-term thinking." His evidence suggests we're taking the first alternative, which will include a swift, final ride into the dark future on the runaway train of progress. Wright's account tempts one to bet on the rats and roaches. --Ted Whittaker

Book Description

Each time history repeats itself, the cost goes up. The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity’s development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we’ve unleashed but have yet to control.

It is Wright’s contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

Customer Reviews:

Ronald Wright's Construction of the Past: A Short History of Progress with a Partisan Agenda.......2007-09-28

Ronald Wright immediately engages his readers in A Short History of Progress by briefly summarizing the troubled and by extension interesting life of Paul Gauguin. After getting us to accept Gauguin as an existentially wise figure, Wright extracts three questions from one of the troubled artist's masterpieces: "'D'Où Venons Nous? Que Sommes Nous? Où Allons Nous?' Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?'" From the moment Gauguin's questions are raised, though, it takes little time to notice some serious historical problems with Wright's narrative, which in the end takes more the form of mainstream liberal propaganda than a convincing call to action.

Wright's Version of History

Wright makes sure to distinguish his project from other works that ask "'we're the winners of history, so why didn't others do what we did?'" (p. 47), thus challenging William McNeill's Rise of the West and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Looking to interpret various human developments as accidental results, Wright traces human history back to its African roots some five million years ago. Along the way, humans may have emerged from a genocidal conflict in which Cro-Magnons prevailed over Neanderthals, meaning "we are at best the heirs of many ruthless victories and at worst the heirs of genocide" (p. 31). Humanity soon thereafter fell into its first "progress trap," when mastery over hunting techniques led to a population boom, leading to increased hunting, and thus reduced animal populations. This by necessity pushed farming to the forefront, giving birth to the civilization "experiment." Humanity further progressed its way into progress traps as innovations typically lead to increased populations at rates that outstripped ecological capacities, while ever-decreasing territorial availability made it increasingly difficult to start over elsewhere after an ecological meltdown. This historical narrative eventually focuses on the historic collapses of the Maya and Easter Islanders in the new world, and the Sumerians and Romans in the old world. A running theme emerges from these analyses: the price goes up every time history repeats itself (p. 107).

This account may appear--at first glance--to merely summarize human history for audiences perhaps not well versed in the subject. A closer inspection, though, reveals a biased historical account, conveniently selective of historical examples, and employing loose correlations that do not reveal causation. One central argument, that ecological ruin is responsible for the fall of past civilizations, offers only negligible evidence and gives little consideration to rival explanations. "It is no coincidence," Wright argues, "that Greek power and achievement began to wane" around the time that deforestation became widespread in Greece (p. 88). Are we then to consider it a coincidence that Greek power began to wane after centuries of warfare had taken their toll, culminating in the protracted thirty-year Peloponnesian War that significantly weakened Greece's foremost powers? Wright does not even mention the centuries of warfare between Hellenic city-states that paved the way for Philip II to bring Greece under Macedonian control. Employing a similar line of argument, Wright states that Rome fell in the west from its inability to ecologically regenerate. This may have contributed to Rome's difficulties, but factors like incessant civil war during the centuries following Commodus' death, poor leadership from numerous incompetent emperors, and the barbarian push across Roman borders due to the fearsome Huns' western migration. Even when the empire teetered on the brink of anarchy it was able to regain decades-long stability during the reigns of powerful and responsible emperors like Diocletian and Constantine, who ruled when Wright suggests that environmental degradation was sending the empire into an unstoppable downward spiral.

The limited evidence available for analyzing Sumeria, Easter Island, and the Maya makes it more difficult to determine causal forces behind their demise. As Wright points out, "because Rome was a literate society, we know of such woes as they affected higher levels of the human pyramid" (p. 93). It thus seems difficult to conclude as Wright does that environmental degradation was in fact the primary causal force for their fall given the lack of extensive literary sources for these three other case studies. With respect to civilizations that did not collapse, such as China and Egypt, Wright again presents loose causal connections, namely that their "generous ecologies ... allowed revival before the culture lost its headway" (p. 105). Yet, Egypt did not have the continuous 3,000 years Wright describes--Egypt fell with the rest of the Roman Empire in the west. Even before Rome added Egypt to its empire, the Persians and then the Macedonians had conquered it as well. If takeover by barbarian tribes represents Rome's fall, then why did none of these conquests mark Egypt's fall?

Foreshadowing Contemporary Horrors

Linguistic sleights of hand allow Wright to connect the past with recent tragedies. Wright's discussion on the death pit of Ur, for example, is not entirely comparable with the mass graves arising from ethnic cleansings in Bosnia or Rwanda (p. 73). These latter two resulted from persecution and intolerance, while the death pit of Ur entailed burying the royal entourage to serve the deceased monarch in the afterlife. If Wright is alluding to the horrors of recent persecutions, lone graves resulting from individual executions by intolerant societies have arguably more connection with 20th century mass graves than the death pit of Ur does. More outlandishly, Wright alludes to horrors like Hitler's final solution with his speculative account of genocidal warfare between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Wright suggests that it is inconceivable for Cro-Magnons to have survived without violence given the history of warfare in Europe over the last 2,000 years, and simultaneously presents Stone Age violence as foreboding of European violence. This is self-referential, though, as Europe's history of violence is used to defend the hypothesis of violence in the Stone Age, while hypothesized violence in the Stone Age is described as somewhat laying the foundations for European violence over the last two millennia.

Going with the Trend

Wright capitalizes on the recent trend of presenting humanity as a foolish and irresponsible species. This historical narrative takes the form of caricature more than anything else, essentially depicting man as irrationally moving from "me like make bang with rock" to "me like make bang with bomb." If we do any more damage, Wright argues, "nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end was a bad idea." Is the style humorous? Yes. Is there some justification for portraying humanity in this manner? Absolutely. Is this constructive? No. Watching a stand-up comic make fun of societal absurdities may be entertaining, but surely we can expect a little more from a book discussing the fate of the planet. Such a caricature should be accompanied by deeper explanations involving human and international relations, and how these have affected developments like nuclear weapons stockpiling. Without any such explanation, readers unfamiliar with history will come to only one conclusion--we are too stupid to survive in the long run. Balance of power theories, collective action problems, cross-cultural conflict, and the historically fine line between civilization and anarchy can never excuse mankind's atrocities and absurdities--but they can explain them, and as such, provide constructive criticism for our progression into a future hopefully devoid of additional progress traps.

In spite of these numerous problems, Wright appears at one point on track to furthering environmental awareness in a critical way: removing it from political agendas as a partisan issue by framing human history as a shared experience. In his final chapter, however, Wright departs from his historical analysis and launches into outright social commentary, from criticizing the war on terror, which he simplistically dismisses on utilitarian economic principles, to subtly attacking the American concentration of wealth and global poverty. These are of course valid criticisms, but they just fall under the international liberal media rubric of anti-Americanism and anti-conservatism when presented together without any detailed argument or critical explanation--such comments just dogmatically reinforce what those with environmental concerns already knew, while alienating those who need to be convinced of environmental threats. In so doing, Wright ends up further entrenching environmental concerns within a framework of liberal partisan politics.

Closing Remarks

Wright's thin explanations for historically disastrous behavior, the terribly loose connections he draws between causes and effects, and the ad hoc attacks on other politically conservative issues will leave many environmental degradation skeptics with their suspicions confirmed that environmental issues are simply liberal propaganda, no different than any other partisan political agenda. Beyond these shortcomings, and despite his jabs at Jared Diamond's work (p. 47; p. 143, n.28), A Short History of Progress ends up arguing far less convincingly much of what Diamond has already written in his "trilogy" The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, Guns, Germs and Steele, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Critics who find Diamond's conclusions to be rather specious at times will most likely find Wright's causal connections unbearable and even more tendentious. Wright quotes Adolf Hitler as saying, "'What luck for the rulers that the people do not think!'" Based on this very short and manipulated history of progress, Wright certainly appears to also view mass audiences as quite easily convincible. Given the urgency of global environmental problems and apparent popular apathy toward the issue, however, Wright's construction of history may be granted some minor degree of redemption if it at least generates any additional attention to environmental issues facing the world today, and more importantly, tomorrow.

Absolutely well-written and thought-provoking .......2007-08-16

This is a really interesting book that briefly talks about the rise and fall of civilizations, the factors that leads to their collapse. At the end of each sections, the author poses questions to ponder. Why this happened and what caused that to happen. In very fine easy-going language, the author tours the whole history of mankind and raises philosophical questions about the directions of our present state. He starts with Paul Gauguin's questions, but these are time-immemorial questions asked by many others from antiquity, and then attempts to answer them from the lessons that we learned from past histories. This book compels one to do philosophical soul-searching in the light of history of civilizations and its repititive patterns.

An excellent author and an excellent book.......2007-03-01

As a Latino university student of history and political economy, I thought that this book was going to be another perspective from the Europan outlook. But Wright knew better. Not only is Wright a great writer and knowledgeable in history, but he writes with clarity and simplicity. He doesn't use complicated words to explain uncomplicated situations and he doesn't make the reading confusing.

The book consists of five short paragraphs that surprisingly--and this is why I gave 5 stars--IS comprehensive and amusing. But Wright sticks with his thesis which is, if a civilization--in this case us--doesn't take care of its habitat and natural resources we will collapse like other great civilization already did for the same reasons: The Maya and Roman empires.

As a history major I strongly recommend this book, it will make you think. But if I had to disagree with it, personally, it would be at the end of the book where he says that his solution is not "anti-capitalist". He spent 90% of the book making you think he disliked Capitalism to end it with saying "The reform that is needed is not anti-capitalist [...] or even deep environmentalist". Other than this disagreement, I recommend the book.

Short History of Progress.......2007-02-14

I found this book to be a wonder expose' of historic patterns in the decline and fall of great civilizations. I consider myself a well read amateur historian, and I rate this book a 5. I recommend it for everyone. Ronald Wright makes great observations and he brings them full circle by relating history's lessons to today's problems regarding fossil fuel and war in the Middle East. This is a must read.

A sign of the times.......2007-01-21

This a transcript of Wright's Massey lectures, which are lectures given on Canadian Broadcorping Castration every year. It repeats the themes of Jared Diamond's trilogy The Third Chimpanzee, Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse: it contains an extremely short history of humanity, points at the ecological vulnerabilities of our civilization, describes the collapse of a few civilizations of the antiquity (Easter Island, which Diamond has also written about, Sumeria, the classical Maya and the Romans), and warns that if things don't change radically, our civilization could easily collapse as well. Wright has also written a one-volume history of the white conquest of the Americas, Stolen Continents, from which he borrows a lot of material for A Short History of Progress.

Would it be correct to draw the following analogy? A hundred years ago, and certainly 70 years ago, it was obvious for all the right-thinking intellectuals that capitalism was on its last legs, and the future belonged to socialism. Yet the social-economic system that ultimately won was a mixture of the two, with more socialism and less capitalism in Ontario than in Texas, but plenty of both in both places. Does the current interest in environmental issues and sustainability among the educated (which gave Jared Diamond's last two books blockbuster success) point at the direction of social change over the coming century, but overstate its eventual impact?

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An Idea in exile
The History of an Idea
The Last Faith

History of the Idea of Progress
Robert Nisbet
Manufacturer: Basic Books Inc.,U.S.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

The Idea of Progress. An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth
The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America
Twilight of Authority
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ASIN: 0465030254

Customer Reviews:

An Idea in exile.......2004-04-28

This Transaction reprint of Nisbet's book is well worth reading although it is not the most classic treatment of the idea of progress, for which see a work such as J.B. Bury's Idea of Progress. Nisbet's book has an ironic history, having been written with a sudden conservative slant just as the postmodern critiques of the idea were in the ascendant. It left the author wondering in the second edition preface why rotten tomatoes were sailing overhead.
The obsessive rant by Darwinians against evolutionary progress is another factor in the twilight of view of history, more likely the twilight of the culture that can no longer handle such a foundational discourse whose lineage stretches back to the Battle of the Ancients and Moderns, or indeed, as the work by Edelstein cited by Nisbet suggests, the Ancient Greeks. Here the conservative rewrite of the idea of progress shows through Nisbet's treatment as he tries to bring in an Augustinian claim on the idea for the Middle Ages. That misses the point that the idea of progress gained strength as an affirmation of creative modernity, able finally to surpass the ancients. Despite a slight wiseacring thus Nisbet's book is always interesting and points to the immense literature on the subject, a la Bury, that has been unjustly sent into exile.

The History of an Idea.......2002-06-25

Robert Nisbet (1913-1996) was, as I've said before, one of the most important thinkers in recent memory. Although commonly called a sociologist, many of his writings fit broadly into the category of the "history of ideas." One such work is HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF PROGRESS. This work is an invaluable overview of the belief in progress from early times to the present. We might be tempted to say that history has no general direction, it's just a series of "ups and downs." While this view is defensible, it is interesting that the belief in progress (or perhaps more accurately, the inevitability of progress) has been one of the dominant ideas of human history. And, as Nisbet shows, it isn't confined to modern man or the hotheads of the French Revolution. Echoes of it can be found in the Greeks and Romans, and Christianity was a very "progress oriented" religion.

Nisbet proceeds chronologically, discussing the key thinkers and schools. One discussion I found fascinating was that of Joachim of Fiore, a Catholic monk, who was one of the leading religious advocates of progress (and who saw a future age of the spiritual elite.) I was quite surprised to read that many Puritans referred favorably to Joachim in the seventeenth century. (In spite of their pessimistic view of human nature, many Puritans - and some of their offshoots such as the Fifth Monarchy Men - were believers in progress.)

Many Enlightenment thinkers believed in progress as well. One such thinker was Kant. (Incidentally, Randroids will be shocked that according Kant "there must be on every count - moral and political as well as economic - a maximum amount of autonomy granted the individual in all areas of his life." In fact, he didn't design the gas chambers at Auschwitz.) Even thinkers who seem quite pessimistic - such as Malthaus - have their progress-oriented side.

In the founding and early years of America, we see the combination of two types of progressivism - a combination of a secularized version of Puritanism and Enlightenment rationalism. This deserves at least some of the blame for America's interventionist foreign policy.

Nisbet also notes that although a faith in progress has been disastrous in many ways (such as Marxism) it has also been beneficial. Many of man's achievements have been nurtured by the belief that things can and will get better.

This is a fast-paced and exciting overview. A work that deals with similar topics from a different perspective is Passmore's THE PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. Eric Voegelin has a political take on the idea of progress in THE NEW SCIENCE OF POLITICS.

The Last Faith.......2001-05-14

In order to do justice to this book, I suppose one would have to have read and studied the long list of historians, scientists, philosophers, and theologians that Nisbet discusses. This would be a difficult task, given that he covers about 2500 years of intellectual history. A book of this scope would necessarily be informed by a life's work. In fact, the introduction to the Transaction edition of 1994 was to be one of Nisbet's last published pieces.

I can say that this is a book accessible to both the academic and the common reader. Plain language was one of the great virtues of Nisbet's writing, structure another, and these virtues are necessities in a book in which reader and writer must balance several ideas, authors, and time periods at once. In most cases the principle of organization is to give each author one, brief chapter. Fortunately, this method allows the reader to dip into any section per interest, as one would an encyclopedia, rather than linearly, although the latter better allows for awareness of the crosscurrents and influences that accrue over time into a sort of intellectual palimpsest.

The theme, of course, is progress, the notion that step by step advancement and improvement can be detected as a fundamental law in the past, present, and future of civilization. In tracing the origin and early development of the idea in Part One, Nisbet exposes the common fallacy that thoughts about progress began with the Enlightenment. Using textual evidence and the scholarship of the past fifty years, he proves that the idea of progress has roots in the work of the Greeks, Romans, and Christians.

Part Two examines the zenith of faith in progress during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here Nisbet divides his discussion into those who defined progress as freedom (the degree of freedom a nation possessed) and those who defined progress as power (the desire to shape human consciousness). In the last section, Nisbet discusses prospects for the idea of progress and illustrates where it has engaged the minds of a few contemporary authors.

I found myself occasionally in awe at the ambitiousness of Nisbet's book, even more at his success. The pertinence of a book like this is obvious when we consider that the idea of progress has been the motive force behind many of the accomplishments-and failures-of Western civilization. What would happen if this substrata were to be removed? We would be less than human if we failed to ask, from time to time: Where are we? Where have we been and where are we going?

History and the Idea of Progress
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Interesting Critique

History and the Idea of Progress
Arthur M. Melzer , and Jerry Weinberger
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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Technology in the Western Political Tradition

ASIN: 0801481821

Customer Reviews:

Interesting Critique.......2003-12-11

When Francis Fukuyama published his essay on the end of history, there was a good deal of controversey about the ideals of liberal democracy and whether or not it was truly the end of human development. This collection of essays summarizes the critiques that were made about his claim.

As a high school history teacher, it is my firm belief that this book should be a must read for any student of history beyond the high school level. This collection of essays has established a basis for discussing history, specifically its purpose, which then leads to the purpose of studying history. While we have all heard and most accept the argument that studying history is a part of being a good citizen of the world, these essays show us that history is more than just being a good citizen of the world, it is more than understanding how we got to a specific point, it is also showing us where we are going and how we are going to get there.

Some of the essays can seem esoteric at first, but as you continue to read them, it becomes apparent that the essay is connnected to the general theme of the book. There are some connections that take some thought to identify and readily accept, but after I reread those specific essays, I see the connection.

The editors did an excellent job of providing a comprehensive set of essays to make us question what exactly the end of history really is.

True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
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Great Book

Good but Stretched too far

Progress Feels the Lasch

Pretty clueless, pretty out of date

Closest Thing to Lasch-at-a-Glance

True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics
Christopher Lasch
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Binding: Paperback

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The Revolt of the Elites: And the Betrayal of Democracy

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Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged

ASIN: 0393307956

Customer Reviews:

Great Book.......2006-04-13

CL had the guts to discuss the taboo's of the Lefts great failures, anybody that cannot see the wisdom in this great thinkers work are probably hate fillled liberals that really hate themselves.

2 thumbs up on ALL OF HIS WORK !

Good but Stretched too far.......2004-01-03

If this book had concerned itself with the idea of progress, the history and future of progress, that would have been quite sufficient. But no, he must historize everything, including the whole last thid of the book (really weak) where we review and empathize with just about every social cause and group on the planet.

Progress is interesting; those who criticize it use the very thing they decry to make their point. In one sense, progress does mean human enrichment. Now, to many folks this means more things. To Lasch, it should mean a better life, better citizens, more responsibility. I guess one could say it was the classic argument: Quantity vs Quality.

It goes without saying that progress brings material wealth - it always has and always will. Most of us take it for granted and even those who protested the "excesses of capitalism" at the WTO in Rome arrived by jet! Lasch laments the loss of authority in our society and this is directly related to loss of civic participation. Only one generation previous, men and women considered such things as Masons, Rotary, Optimist, and Knights of Columbus important features in society. But the silence from civic groups is deafening.

Lasch is particularly concerned about a new type of rampant individualism that has swept the nation (and the West). It is of the kind that does what it wants to do regardless of how others are affected, it does not partake in communal discussion nor social gatherings, it is a god unto itself. Societal goals are sublimated to the pursuit of pure pleasure. This condition is fatal for a society that prides itself on civic involvement and a long-standing ecumencalism in religion and politics. In the end he asks the question. "What is it all for?" That is something each of us must answer.

Progress Feels the Lasch.......2000-04-22

It is difficult to find fault with the main thesis of True and Only Heaven: that "progress" is nothing more or less than an illusion and that in the end, as the poet wrote,"the paths of glory lead but to the grave". Mr.Lasch arrives at this conclusion via a ciruitous route of some five hundred pages of spectacular erudition while at the same time never lapsing into scholarly jargon that might cause the general reader to become hopelessly befuddled. Although the title suggests an author who was either conservative or neo-conservative,in truth it's difficult to say what ideology he embraced--if any--since he is critical of both the Left AND the Right. Clearly, Lasch, who died several years ago, had become thoroughly disenchanted with a society that had fallen into a pit of mindless consumerism and materialism. As critical as he is of Reagan's America, one can only guess what he would have thought of the America of Bill Clinton.

This book is a must read for anyone who believes that our country is slowly becoming unhinged.

Pretty clueless, pretty out of date.......1999-07-20

It is simply amazing that anyone still bothers with Christopher Lasch. He is apparently one of those neo-conservative writers who desperately wish to be considered 'faithful' to the old Left. Well, he's not fooling me. I picked this thing up at the library and was hooked- not for his ideas, which are predictable and even conservative, but for the way he thinks he has something conclusive to say about everything. He is afraid of contemporary feminist challenges to his own assumptions, is afraid of African Americans making a world for themselves, afraid of everything. As a feminist and a white Woman who empathizes with African Americans and other exploited peoples, I know I can find better discussions of the politics of race and gender in the United States. Don't bother with this one, please.

Closest Thing to Lasch-at-a-Glance.......1998-12-26

I frequently argue that the breadth of Lasch's moral vision requires a thorough reading of his ouevre, not just an individual title. That said, TRUE AND ONLY HEAVEN comes the closest to encapsulating what Lasch, as one of the last best public intellectuals, had to say. Part of HEAVEN's success in this regard is its simple length, which allows for a more comprehensive statement. More important, though, is that here finally Lasch is explicitly taking as subject what was his central obsession all along: the locomotive degradation of allegiance to the Jeffersonian ideal in a heedless process called "progress." Those accustomed to the spirited polemic of his more famous work may find themselves slowed by the more overtly scholarly nature of this one, but the payoff is big in terms of a foundation in the animating ideas of the lifework of the best cultural critic of his era. Lasch is never simple. He is always subtle, and always stoic: he makes Hawthorne and Nietszche look like playground amatuers. More importantly, his perspective is radical enough (meaning, truly alternative--almost anarchic)and his arguments innovative enough that one may finish his book and only think one has read it. A close, careful read, however, will yield a take on the malaise critical to any sort of "progress" in the discourse about the future of democracy in America.

The Idea of Progress. An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth

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The Optimistic Jew

The Idea of Progress. An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth
J B Bury
Manufacturer: Echo Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Historiography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History of the Idea of Progress
Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham
Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History)
Whig Interpretation of History
The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

ASIN: 1406801089

Book Description

Emphasizing the necessity of adhering with rigid exactness to historical facts, the author presents a scheme of ideas upon which to thread the facts of human development which extends to cover the whole range of civilization in its movement through time.

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"We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the general test to which social aims and theories are submitted as a matter of course."

Customer Reviews:

The Optimistic Jew.......2007-08-31

The Commercial Revolution, Scientific Revolution, and Industrial Revolution on the background of Renaissance Humanism that placed the good life on this earth above a good life in the hereafter gave birth to the very concept of progress - the ability of rational human beings to improve individual and collective human conditions by their own efforts and initiative. Postmodernists would call the idea of Progress a "construct" of western civilization, suggesting that it has no objective validation. Even so, it is an idea that has conquered the world. When "progressives" complain about income and wellness gaps between the developed and the developing worlds they are actually endorsing the assumptions underlying the idea of progress - that rational human beings applying their energies in an organized way can solve or ameliorate any natural or manmade problem we face. This is the essence of rational Zionism and the underlying assumption of my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century". Bury's book is the classic presentation of the idea of progress.

The Idea of Progress (Philosophie Und Wissenschaft, Bd 13)

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The Idea of Progress (Philosophie Und Wissenschaft, Bd 13)

Manufacturer: Walter de Gruyter
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Early Civilization | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Civilization & Culture | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Epistemology | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 3110153939

The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Yale Historical Publications Series)

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The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Yale Historical Publications Series)
David Spadafora
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0300046715

Book Description

The idea of progress stood at the very center of the intellectual world of eighteenth-century Britain, closely linked to every major facet of the British Enlightenment as well as to the economic revolutions of the period. Drawing on hundreds of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets, David Spadafora here provides the most extensive discussion ever written of this prevailing sense of historical optimism.

The idea of progress: History and society (The New thinker's library, [26])

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The idea of progress: History and society (The New thinker's library, [26])
Sidney Pollard
Manufacturer: Watts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Philosophy of History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Civilization & Culture | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0296348341

Apostle of Human Progress: Lester Frank Ward and American Political Thought, 1841-1913 (American Intellectual Culture)

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Apostle of Human Progress: Lester Frank Ward and American Political Thought, 1841-1913 (American Intellectual Culture)
Edward C. Rafferty
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History & Theory | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

In Apostle of Human Progress, Edward C. Rafferty presents the first full scale intellectual portrait of Ward. Rafferty shows how Ward's thought laid the foundations for the modern administrative state, and brings out his contributions to twentieth century American liberalism. Classic and comprehensive, this work is ideal for everyone interested in the history of American ideas and thinkers.

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