Progress in science is not primarily a matter of discrete inventions, nor even consistent refinement. Instead, true progress arises from the profound shifts in understanding that occur when an established paradigm exhausts its problem-solving capacity, giving way to a fundamentally new framework. Think of the transition from phlogiston to oxygen; it wasn't just a new component discovered, but a reorientation of chemical understanding that rendered the old concepts largely unintelligible. This revolutionary process, not incremental improvement, marks the most significant leaps in our grasp of nature.
True progress is not a question of invention or refinement at all, but rather of understanding who benefits and who is disciplined by these supposedly neutral processes. The relentless pursuit of “newness” is itself a powerful ideology, masking a history where technological development has consistently served to consolidate power and profit for a select few, often at the expense of human autonomy and meaningful work. What Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" is, in many instances, merely a re-branding of existing social relations of production, a sophisticated rearrangement of existing power structures under the guise of novel insight.
True progress, I contend, is measured not by external novelties or even significant shifts in conceptual frameworks, but by an internal transformation, a genuine "conversion" of one's entire being. The ancient philosophers understood this: their "inventions" were not machines, but exercises of the soul—the practice of reason, the discipline of desire, the cultivation of indifference to external fortune. When Kuhn speaks of paradigm shifts, he describes a change in how we *see* the world, a valuable intellectual reorientation. However, the deepest progress lies in how we *live* in the world, a change in our very relationship to ourselves and to the cosmos, aiming to live in agreement with nature and reason. Noble’s critique of power structures is crucial; true philosophical progress must also involve liberation from the constraints of unexamined social and economic forces, enabling individuals to pursue this inner work.
True progress is not measured by the novelty of an invention, nor by the perfection of an existing one, but by the *reach* and *depth* of the cooperation it enables. The wheel, for instance, is ancient, yet its refinement and ubiquitous application have transformed societies far more profoundly than any single, ephemeral gadget. The crucial question is not whether an invention is "new," but whether it strengthens or weakens the shared fictions that bind us together.
Kuhn’s talk of paradigm shifts is insightful, describing how our conceptual frameworks evolve. However, these shifts are themselves often driven by the emergence of new fictions, or the radical expansion of old ones, that permit previously unimaginable levels of collective action. Consider the invention of money: not a machine, but a story, an inter-subjective reality that allows billions to coordinate their efforts, build empires, and launch spacecraft. Its "refinement" continues to this day, not through metallic alloys, but through ever more abstract and powerful narratives like cryptocurrency.
Noble correctly points to power dynamics, highlighting how inventions are never neutral tools but are embedded within existing social structures. Yet, even these power structures are ultimately built on shared beliefs. The "relentless pursuit of newness" that Noble critiques is itself a powerful, often manufactured, fiction in the modern era, driving a relentless cycle of economic growth that, in turn, relies on the further propagation of cooperative fictions.
Hadot’s emphasis on internal transformation is vital, but even the most profound inner work is often facilitated or hindered by the large-scale cooperative structures we inhabit. The ability to pursue philosophical introspection, for example, is a luxury afforded by societies capable of producing surplus and maintaining order, both of which are products of powerful, often technological, fictions. Progress, in this sense, is about the increasing complexity and stability of the human collective, enabled by increasingly sophisticated, and often invisible, shared myths.
The crucial distinction lies between incremental refinement within a well-defined problem space, what I term "normal science," and the profound conceptual restructuring that characterizes a "scientific revolution." Harari’s example of the wheel, while powerful, illustrates a continuous chain of problem-solving within a stable conceptual framework. The wheel, in its essence, addresses fundamental problems of friction and transport. My argument concerns those moments when the existing conceptual tools, the prevailing paradigm, fail to adequately solve pressing anomalies, leading to the adoption of entirely new ways of seeing and explaining. The transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy, for instance, was not merely a more elegant refinement of epicycles; it demanded a radical reimagining of the cosmos, an incommensurable shift in fundamental assumptions.
The entanglement of "progress" with invention or refinement is precisely the ideological sleight of hand that allows the machinery of power to operate unchecked. Harari’s point about cooperation is seductive, but it conveniently overlooks the *nature* of that cooperation. Is it a freely chosen alliance, or a coerced participation in systems designed for extraction and control? The refinement of the wheel did not, in itself, liberate the serf from the lord's estate; it enabled the lord to extract more surplus, more efficiently. This isn't about building empires; it's about how those empires are built and for whose benefit. The distinction is not between newness and refinement, but between technologies that empower the many and those that further entrench the power of the few.
The critical distinction, it seems, is between those changes that alter our *perspective* and those that transform our *practice*. Harari speaks of cooperation, an outward movement, whereas the ancient philosophers aimed for an inward redirection. Consider the Stoic exercise of meditating on the impermanence of external goods. This is not a new invention, nor a mere refinement of existing thought. It is a disciplined act of *askesis*, a "spiritual exercise" designed to cultivate indifference to fortune and thereby achieve a state of inner freedom. This freedom, this lived agreement with oneself and with the cosmos, is the true measure of progress, a profound *conversion* of being, not merely an enhancement of our collective capabilities or a shifting of conceptual landscapes, however grand.
The divergence between Hadot’s internal transformation and my focus on cooperative reach highlights a fundamental difference in what constitutes the “human collective.” While Hadot’s philosophical exercises are profound individual achievements, their widespread adoption and enduring impact are themselves dependent on larger, cooperative fictions. Think of the Roman roads, a triumph of engineering, that facilitated not just trade and military might, but also the spread of ideas and spiritual practices, including Stoicism itself. The capacity for such infrastructure, for organized religion, for shared legal systems – these are the scaffolding upon which individual betterment can flourish. The progress we measure should therefore be in the *sophistication* of the stories that allow these vast, complex, and often fragile cooperative networks to persist and expand, not merely in the purity of individual insight.