Draft talk:Progress Studies
Move to Mainspace
[edit]I came here because I was looking to make an article on Progress Studies but it looks like it's already been done, it just isn't in mainspace. Are there things that the contributors are waiting to do before moving it to mainspace? I'm admittedly not the best at Manual-of-Style-type stuff but it looks decent (although I might suggest paring down some of the historic content that isn't about people who actually affiliated themselves with progress studies to make it more about Cowen-Collison-related thinkers) Mcavoybickford (talk) 01:34, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
- I want to move it to mainspace too when the quality of the article is high enough. Agree on all your points. Ruthgrace (talk) 04:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
- I've cleaned up the intro and the Criticisms section; still working on History and Ideas. Ruthgrace (talk) 06:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
Historical precedents (*previously first section post lede; worth including again?!)...
[edit]After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the effects of the industrial revolution and the improvements in agricultural yield began. The next century saw both economic and democratic growth. According to the Cato Institute's Human Progress project, between 1820 and 1914, per-person inflation-adjusted GDP rose by 127 percent. Life expectancy rose from 41 to 53 years in Great Britain and 39 to 58 years in Sweden.[1]
Modern writers and thinkers have had conflicting perspectives on growth, particularly population growth, and human progress. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a widely read book that predicted mass human famine in the 1970s due to overpopulation.[2] In this context, thinkers such as Julian Simon pushed back, arguing that population growth increases economic and material abundance with his 1980 publication in Science Magazine, Resources, population, environment: an oversupply of false bad news[3][4], which he expanded upon in his 1981 book, The Ultimate Resource. In the 1990s, statistician Hans Rosling developed quantitative methods to illustrate trends showing improvements to human health and welfare despite population growth.[5][6]
In 2018, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker wrote Enlightenment Now, detailing empirical progress in human health, wealth, violent crime, technology, and entertainment observed since the Enlightenment, to add to the body of literature countering the common misconception that human progress has been reversing.[7][8] Critics say that Pinker does not adequatly address growing inequality[9] and that the original Enlightenment thinkers were often anti-progress and pro-scientific-racism.[10][dubious – discuss] Biohistorian15 (talk) 07:47, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
- ^ "History of Progress". HumanProgress.org. 26 June 2017. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
- ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Mann, Charles C. "The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Regis, Ed (February 1997). "The Doomslayer". Wired. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2008-05-18.
- ^ Gilpin, Kenneth N. (1998-02-12). "Julian Simon, 65, Optimistic Economist, Dies". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Provost, Claire; @claireprovost (2013-05-17). "Hans Rosling: the man who's making data cool". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ "Don't Panic - The Truth About Population | BBC Partnership". Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Bakewell, Sarah (2018-03-02). "Steven Pinker Continues to See the Glass Half Full". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Chotiner, Isaac (2018-02-20). "Is the World Actually Getting … Better?". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Goldin, Ian (2018-02-16). "The limitations of Steven Pinker's optimism". Nature. 554 (7693): 420–422. Bibcode:2018Natur.554..420G. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-02148-1. PMID 32094943. Retrieved 2024-01-19.
- ^ Hanlon, Aaron R. (2018-05-17). "Steven Pinker's new book on the Enlightenment is a huge hit. Too bad it gets the Enlightenment wrong". Vox. Retrieved 2024-01-19.