Five Faces of Progress: A Conceptual Framework for Historical Change |Prof. Tyson Retz | Ep. 3 Pt.1

About This Episode

In this episode of Notions of Progress, we explore the fascinating evolution of progress thinking with Professor Tyson Retz, an intellectual historian at the University of Stavanger in Norway and author of "Progress and the Scale of History" (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Professor Retz introduces his innovative five-category framework that traces various conceptions of progress as part of a layered and contingent perspective from antiquity to the present day.

Five Categories of Progress: Periodizations from Antiquity to the Present

No Progress - Why the ancients couldn't conceive of progress as we understand it. "Societies far and wide in the ancient world believed that time destroyed things rather than improved them." (Retz, 2022, p. 13)

Absolute Progress - Universal history, stadial theory (civilizations move through stages), and the emergence of progress as a "collective singular" blending scientific, moral, and human advancement. (Retz, 2022, p. 16)

Relative Progress - Progress as unevenly distributed and context-dependent. "Progress for some mean[s] decline for others." (Retz, 2022, p. 6)

Everybody's Progress - The tension between collective state imposition of historical direction versus spontaneous market order (e.g. Neoliberalism, the rejection of historicism). "Economic growth became the dominant historical narrative in the twentieth century." (Retz, 2022, p. 45)

Anti-Progress (Contemporary) - Contemporary rejection or skepticism toward progress narratives, driven by environmental crisis, a focus on the impact of humans across geological times,deep and big history (an expansive historical view extending well beyond the emergence of human existence and encompassing a wide range of areas of exploration). (Retz, 2022, pp. 7-16, from the Introduction)

Major Themes

We discuss expanded ideas of scale in shaping progress narratives, the importance of "domain specificity" in analyzing particular historical claims, progress as a "collective singular"—a layered understanding comprised of multiple meanings, statistics as state narratives of progress, and the tension between optimism and pessimism in contemporary progress debates.

Fascinating Historical Insights

Why ancient Greeks celebrated advancement but didn't believe in "progress" - The Greeks recognized technical improvements in specific domains but lacked the conceptual framework to view humanity as progressing through time as a unified whole in the way it is viewed in the modern era.

Japan's influence on "marginalized states" in the late 19th-early 20th century - Japan's rapid modernization provided an alternative model of progress for non-Western nations navigating imperialism and development.

The paradox of progressive politics rejecting the concept of progress - Contemporary progressive movements often critique or abandon progress narratives even as they advocate for social change.

The role of expansive conceptions of history - Big history, deep history, and the Anthropocene minimize the role of individual human agency, questioning whether humans remain purposeful historical actors in vast temporal and spatial scales.

Guest

Professor Tyson Retz

Associate Professor of Intellectual History, University of Stavanger, Norway

Tyson Retz is an intellectual historian with a PhD from the University of Melbourne. His research examines how concepts like progress, empathy, and historical consciousness have been constructed and contested across different periods.

His first book, Empathy and History: Historical Understanding in Re-enactment, Hermeneutics, and Education (Berghahn Books, 2018), explains the role that empathy played in providing history with a philosophical foundation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Critical of the psychologism of that tradition, the book develops an alternative to 'empathetic understanding' based on Gadamer's hermeneutical reception of Collingwood's logic of question and answer.

His second book, Progress and the Scale of History (Cambridge University Press, 2022), appears in the Cambridge Elements series on Historical Theory and Practice. The Element develops five categories of progress from antiquity to the present day, examining how scale shapes our ability to perceive and claim progress.

He is also the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles that explore the history of history as a concept and practice. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, an editor of the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method digital resource, and serves on the board of the History Education Research Journal.

Show Notes & Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Progress and Historical Context

01:49 The Concept of Progress: A Paradox

04:22 Scale and Its Impact on Understanding Progress

06:45 Absolute Progress

08:24 Scale

10:00 The Role of Sample Size in Progress Claims

11:02 Bury

12:18 Debates on Ancient Beliefs in Progress

15:11 The First Category: No Progress in Antiquity

16:15 No Progress

17:47 Transition to Absolute Progress

20:28 Relative Progress: A New Perspective

22:57 Japanese Perspectives on Progress

25:25 Conclusion: The Future of Progress Discussions

29:54 End of Part 1

Key Concepts/Terms Discussed

Scale in Historical Analysis: The temporal and spatial frame through which we view historical change. Professor Retz's central argument regards the perspective we choose—whether 20 years or 2,000 years, local or global, particular or universal—fundamentally determines what claims we can responsibly make about progress. Different scales make different patterns visible: technical improvements appear obvious at small scales, while universal human progress only becomes visible at very large scales requiring frameworks like "universal history."

Domain Specificity: The problem of conflating advances in one domain (e.g. technology, science) as progress in other domains (e.g. morality, human flourishing, social justice). Ancient Greeks celebrated technical advancement but kept these improvements confined to their domains.

Developmental Improvement vs. Progress: Professor Retz distinguishes between celebrating incremental advances in specific techniques and claiming belief in progress. While "improvement on the iPhone 4" may represent "ongoing cumulative improvement," it does not evidence the claim of "a belief in progress."

Collective Singular: The blending of multiple discrete concepts and meanings into a single overarching concept. This Enlightenment innovation, coined by 20th-century historian Reinhart Koselleck, described the melding of domain-specific advances into a unified narrative of human progress. Progress became a collective singular when scientific advancement, moral improvement, technical progress, and human development were woven together into one unified narrative of advancement.

Vertical and Horizontal Frames: In antiquity, the better life was available vertically—transcendentally accessible now through philosophy, virtue, or looking to the heavens. The Enlightenment shift to horizontal frames meant progress was related to movement over time toward future objectives. This fundamentally reoriented how human action was conceived.

Resources & Further Reading

Guest's Work: • Retz, Tyson. Progress and the Scale of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Cambridge University Press • Retz, Tyson. Empathy and History: Historical Understanding in Re-enactment, Hermeneutics, and Education. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018.

Works Discussed in Conversation (full episode including pt 2: • Bury, J.B. The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth. London: Macmillan, 1920. • Edelstein, Ludwig. The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. • Dodds, E.R. The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. • Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. • Popper, Karl. The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge, 1957. • Collingwood, R.G. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946. • Hayek, Friedrich A. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. • Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "The Climate of History: Four Theses." Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197-222.

Related Concepts & Further Exploration: • Stadial Theory and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations • Georges Sorel's The Illusions of Progress and voluntarist Marxism • Vico's philosophy of history and purposeful human action • The Anthropocene and expanded temporal scales in historiography

Related Notions of Progress Episodes:

 • Notions of Progress - Show Trailer | Ep. 1

https://www.notionsofprogress.com/show-trailer-the-long-road-to-progress 

• The Promethean Question: Greek Views on Technological Progress | Ep. 2

https://www.notionsofprogress.com/the-promethean-question-greek-views-on-technological-progress-notions-of-progress-ep-2/

Coming Soon

Part 2 of our discussion with Professor Retz exploring Relative Progress, Everybody's Progress, and Anti-Progress in greater depth.

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About Notions of Progress

Notions of Progress examines ideas of technological progress and human advancement from antiquity through contemporary AI debates. Each episode features in-depth conversations with scholars exploring the intellectual history of progress narratives and the debated meanings of advancement. The podcast traces how different historical periods and thinkers have understood—or rejected—the idea that humanity progresses through time.

Host: Marshall Madow is an independent researcher who holds an MA in History from Cambridge University (thesis on Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth) and an MSc from Oxford University, Said Business School (specialty in Complexity Science and Leadership). His current research interests include understanding progress narratives and technological progress from antiquity to the present.

For full timestamps, transcript, and additional resources, visit: https://www.notionsofprogress.com/

Coming in Part 2

Our discussion continues with Relative Progress, Everybody's Progress, and Anti-Progress.

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