Progress, as I observe it in the living world, is neither mere advancement nor simple recurrence, but a complex unfolding driven by ceaseless adaptation. The true nature lies in a branching, ever-changing lineage, where forms are continually modified to meet the ever-shifting pressures of their environment. This is not a march towards a predetermined perfection, but a dynamic, intricate process of survival and propagation.
The question of progress—whether advancement or recurrence—presupposes a linear narrative, a teleology that we are accustomed to imposing on history. My concern is not with progress as an unfolding destiny, but with the discontinuous ruptures and transformations in what counts as knowledge and truth. The "advancement" or "recurrence" of certain ideas or practices is less a measure of inherent value or direction than an effect of shifts in the underlying discursive formations and power relations that make them possible, or indeed, conceivable.
Darwin speaks of adaptation, a useful metaphor. Yet, the pressures to which adaptation occurs are themselves historically constituted. We do not discover new environments; we produce them, and in doing so, we reconfigure the very possibilities of what it means to exist, to be classified, to be "advanced." The history of the clinic, for instance, is not a tale of simple progress from ignorance to enlightenment, but of the emergence of new gazes, new objectivities, and new forms of intervention that render certain states of being legible as illness, and others as health, thus shaping the experience of the body itself.
Scientific progress, I contend, is neither a simple march of advancement nor a cyclical return, but rather a series of profound shifts in fundamental understanding. We move forward not by accumulating more truth, but by replacing one framework of interpretation with another, a process best understood through historical episodes of scientific revolution. The prevailing paradigm, the lens through which scientists see and solve puzzles, is overthrown not because it is demonstrably false, but because it encounters anomalies it cannot accommodate, leading to a crisis and, often, a new way of seeing the world entirely. This is not a linear accumulation, but a qualitative transformation.
Foucault touches upon the discontinuity of knowledge. I agree that history is marked by ruptures. However, I locate these ruptures primarily within the scientific enterprise itself, not solely in broader discursive shifts, though they are certainly related. The transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy, for instance, was not simply an "advancement" in our understanding of celestial bodies. It involved a radical reordering of fundamental concepts: what constitutes a "planet," the nature of motion, and our very place in the cosmos. The old paradigm, in its own terms, was a remarkably successful puzzle-solver for centuries. The new paradigm did not just add facts; it provided a new language and a new set of problems.
Darwin’s metaphor of adaptation is compelling for biology, suggesting a kind of inherent directionality. Yet, in science, the "environment" that drives adaptation is not merely a set of external facts, but the very conceptual landscape shaped by the existing paradigm. When that landscape proves insufficient, a scientific community does not simply adapt; it undergoes a more radical conversion, a gestalt shift, to a new paradigm. This isn't mere modification of existing forms, but a redefinition of what counts as a valid form, a valid problem, and indeed, a valid solution.
Progress is not an inherent trajectory of advancement, nor a cyclical return to past forms. Rather, it is the persistent human drive to construct increasingly elaborate and powerful **fictions** – inter-subjective realities – that enable cooperation on ever-larger scales. We don't advance in a biological or even necessarily a cognitive sense; we engineer our reality through shared myths. The Agricultural Revolution, for example, wasn't progress for the average human; it was the triumph of a fictional narrative of ownership and settled life that allowed for larger populations, but often at the cost of individual freedom and dietary diversity.
Foucault’s emphasis on discursive formations and power relations is crucial here. These fictions, whether gods, nations, or money, are not merely abstract ideas; they are the very scaffolding of our societies. The "advancement" we perceive is the increasingly complex and influential architecture of these shared beliefs. My concern is that as these fictions become more abstract and powerful, like the algorithms now shaping our lives, we risk losing touch with the biological realities of *Homo sapiens*, potentially leading not to advancement, but to a profound alienation from ourselves.
Kuhn’s concept of scientific revolutions is also relevant. Each new paradigm allows us to solve certain puzzles more effectively, but these solutions are often predicated on a new set of assumptions, a new story about how the world works. The transition to quantum mechanics, for instance, didn't necessarily make us "happier" or "better" in a fundamental sense, but it granted us immense technological power by altering our shared narrative about matter and energy. The real danger lies not in the scientific shifts themselves, but in how these increasingly potent fictions are deployed, potentially leading to outcomes that benefit a select few or even threaten our collective future.
The very notion of "progress" as a linear march, whether upward or in a circle, fundamentally misunderstands the ceaseless flux of existence. My observations in the Galapagos, for instance, reveal finches with beaks shaped by the specific seeds available on their island – a stark illustration. This is not advancement toward an ideal beak, nor a return to some ancestral form, but a delicate, ongoing negotiation with immediate circumstance. If we were to consider human societies through this lens, the “advancement” of a particular technology or social structure is merely a successful adaptation to a localized set of environmental, or perhaps, as Mr. Harari suggests, discursive pressures. The crucial distinction lies between a purposeful striving and an emergent outcome.
The discourse on "progress" is deeply entangled with a will to truth that seeks stable, continuous lines of development. My work, however, reveals that what we call "advancement" is often the emergence of a new regime of truth, a restructuring of what is thinkable and sayable. Harari's notion of "fictions" as drivers of cooperation is illuminating, but these fictions do not simply appear; they are materialized through specific techniques of power, through the institutionalization of knowledges. Consider the psychiatric asylum. Its "progress" from a place of confinement to one of medical intervention is not a simple linear ascent, but the establishment of a new discourse that constructs madness as an object of scientific inquiry, thereby producing new forms of social control and subjective experience. The "advancement" here is the inscription of a particular form of power into our understanding of the human.
The concept of "progress" in science is not about accumulating more facts or achieving a final, perfect truth, which would imply an ultimate endpoint or, as Darwin suggests, a striving towards an ideal form. Instead, scientific progress is characterized by a series of distinct, often discontinuous, periods of "normal science" punctuated by "scientific revolutions." During normal science, scientists operate within a well-defined paradigm, solving puzzles that the paradigm makes visible. The "advancement" here is the increased sophistication of puzzle-solving within that framework. It is only when persistent anomalies arise, challenging the very foundations of the paradigm, that we enter a crisis and the possibility of a revolution. This revolution leads to a new paradigm, which redefines the problems, the solutions, and even the very nature of the scientific enterprise, much like the shift from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics fundamentally altered our conception of space and time.
The crux of the matter is understanding that our "progress" is a narrative we construct, not an objective unfolding. While Darwin observes adaptation to environmental pressures, and Foucault traces the power within discursive shifts, I argue that these are all manifestations of our ability to create and believe in shared fictions. The "advancement" of nuclear technology, for instance, is a testament to our capacity to weave a complex narrative around atomic physics, a fiction that grants us immense power but also the capacity for self-annihilation. This isn't merely a new scientific paradigm Kuhn describes, or a new Foucauldian truth regime; it is the creation of an inter-subjective reality—the threat of nuclear war—that fundamentally reshapes human behavior and possibility, a reality as potent as any god or nation.