12. Time, History, and Progress
Time and belief in progress
Although time has come to play an increasingly important role in modern thought, there have been considerable differences of view concerning 'progress'. The period from about 1750 to 1900 was the age of greatest faith in that concept as well as being an age when people became more and more aware of the significance of time. For example, in Paris in the 1820s the historian Guizot drew vast audiences to his masterly lectures on the history of Europe in which he argued that the fundamental idea embedded in the word 'civilization' is progress. This belief was greatly encouraged by the spread of democracy. As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in a famous passage of his classic Democracy in America, published in 1835, whereas aristocratic nations are naturally inclined to narrow the scope of human perfectibility, democratic nations tend to suffer from the opposite tendency.
It can scarcely be believed how many facts flow from the philosophical theory of the indefinite perfectibility of man, or how strong an influence it exercises even on men who, living entirely for the purposes of action and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it, without knowing anything about it. I accost an American sailor and inquire why his ships are built to last for a short time; he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is making such rapid progress that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidentally and on a particular subject from an uninstructed man, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concern.1
Belief in progress was strongly reinforced by Darwin's theory of biological evolution as presented in The Origin of Species, which appeared in 1859. It was also of importance to the other discoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace, and even, more to the engineer, philosopher, and sociologist Herbert Spencer, who tried to make the principle of progress the supreme law of the universe. The
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inevitability of progress was also an article of faith for Comte, Marx, and other nineteenth-century philosophers of history. In their different ways both Comte and Marx believed in the existence of three successive stages of social evolution; in Comte's case, the theological, the metaphysical, and the 'positivistic' (scientific); and in Marx's case the Hegelian sequence of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. More than a hundred years before Comte and Marx, Vico also had a concept of three distinct historical stages dominated, respectively, by gods, heroes, and men, in that order. Ruskin even divided geological history into three periods: first, that in which the earth crystallized; then that in which it was 'sculptured'; and finally that now present in which it is being 'desculptured' or deformed, mountains being eroded, glaciers piling up debris, and so on. This historical type of triadic numerology, which has manifested itself in other ways too--for example, Moscow as the 'Third Rome' and Hitler's Germany as the 'Third Reich'--can be traced back to Joachim of Fiore in the thirteenth century.
Nineteenth-century belief in the reality of progress was accompanied by an increased awareness of the importance of history for the understanding of subjects such as law. The historical attitude to jurisprudence can be traced back to Gustav von Hugo ( 1764-1844) and Friedrich von Savigny ( 1779-1861) in Germany. Savigny argued powerfully against the idea that had been prevalent the previous century, particularly in France, that law can be arbitrarily imposed on a country irrespective of both its current state and its history. In England, Savigny's point of view inspired Sir Henry Maine ( 1822-88), Professor of Civil Law in the University of Cambridge from 1847. His well-known book Ancient Law, first published in 1861, introduced into this country the idea of the historical approach not only to the study of law but also to that of society generally. The outstanding figure in developing the historical approach to the study of society was, however, the Oxford anthropologist E.B. Tylor ( 1832-1917), the first edition of whose famous book Primitive Culture appeared in 1871. Although he explicitly drew attention to the persistence of pre-scientific modes of thought in civilized societies, he argued that the history of man, as revealed by a study of the implements he has used, is indubitably 'the history of an upward development'. He maintained that the essence of progress is man's intellectual development, since it is the precondition of his progress in all other respects. Despite their awareness of the many difficulties and setbacks that had occurred in the history of mankind, belief in the reality of progress and consequently
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in the beneficent nature of time was uppermost in the minds of many prominent Victorian thinkers.
Nevertheless, whereas a poet such as Tennyson in 'Locksley Hall' ( 1842) could write
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change,
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
there were other writers who came to feel the menace of time as much as its promise, and poets such as Blake and Shelley and, more recently, Yeats persisted in the belief that there are cycles of civilization. Similarly, the philosopher Nietzsche, who died in 1900, and the twentieth-century historians and sociologists Spengler, Pareto, and Toynbee all believed in the cyclical nature of history. Meanwhile, criticism of the superficial optimism that had been encouraged by the widespread popularization of Darwinism began to be voiced, for example by the philosophically minded statesman A. J. Balfour in his Rectorial Address to the University of Glasgow in 1891, in which he pointed out that 'the theory of evolution does nothing to justify optimism about the future of mankind'. A similar view was expressed by ' Darwin's bulldog', T. H. Huxley. A generation later Dean Inge in his Romanes Lecture 'The idea of progress', delivered at Oxford in 1920, made the caustic comment: 'The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.' Loss of faith in progress had already been made the subject of an acute historical analysis, in 1908, by the French writer Georges Sorel in his book Les illusions du progrès.
Following the First World War the general climate of opinion, particularly in Germany, caused the pessimistic views of Oswald Spengler to attract considerable attention. His widely read book The Decline of the West seemed to many British readers more cogent than the old-fashioned optimism expressed by J. B. Bury in his book The Idea of Progress, published in 1920. Spengler's philosophy of history was based on the extension of Goethe's morphological concept of organic nature to include 'cultures'. Spengler regarded these as being 'plant-like', that is, subject to generation, growth, and decay and confined to particular regions of space. Unlike his British counterpart Arnold Toynbee,
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Spengler paid particular attention to the influence of science and technology on history, although he interpreted this influence in his own peculiar cyclical way.
In an important collection of essays on the social and philosophical impact of modern science published in 1978 with the title Paradoxes of Progress, the molecular and neurological biologist Gunther Stent, of the University of California ( Berkeley), has carefully analysed the meaning of 'progress'. He rejects the traditional interpretation of this concept in terms of 'greater happiness' and the 'perfectibility of man', because no precise meaning can be attached to these ideas. Instead, he argues that the only useful way to analyse 'progress' is in terms of the 'will to power'. In other words, a 'better' world signifies 'one in which man has a greater power over external events, one in which he is economically more secure'.2 In Stent's view only this definition can make progress 'an undeniable historical fact'. Stent believes, however, like Spengler, that scientific progress may be coming to an end. A better grounding in the history of science might have saved him from coming to this pessimistic conclusion, for at the end of the eighteenth century the great mathematician Lagrange thought that m
athematical discovery was on the point of petering out, although in fact the following century and the present have seen a greater proliferation of mathematics than occurred in all previous centuries. Similarly, towards the end of the nineteenth century many physicists believed that little new remained to be done in their subject, except to clear up a few minor anomalies and obtain still more accurate values for the principal physical constants. In a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in 1900 with the title 'Nineteenth century clouds over the theory of heat and light',3 however, Lord Kelvin considered two to be important. His concern was not misplaced, particularly as it eventually turned out that one of these clouds would require for its dispersal the theory of relativity developed by Einstein in his famous paper five years later. Moreover, in the same year that Kelvin delivered his lecture Planck introduced the quantum hypothesis. These fundamental advances, together with Rutherford's contemporaneous experimental researches on radioactivity, heralded the golden age of modern science characterized by an unprecedented increase in knowledge and in man's command over nature. In the context of this historical perspective we are justified in querying Stent's conclusion that scientific progress may be coming to an end. Moreover, irrespective of whether scientific and technological discoveries are used beneficially or otherwise, the knowledge that results from them is cumulative--and will remain so unless all
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civilization on this planet comes to a catastrophic and complete end. Consequently, even if we can no longer put our trust in the simple faith of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, who saw in the history of science an exemplification of what, in the preface to his The History of Electricity with Original Experiments ( 1767) he called a 'perpetual progress and improvement' that would continue to heights that are 'really boundless and sublime', there is now no doubt that the continuing momentum of scientific, medical and technological progress makes it impossible for our civilization to be regarded as either static or cyclic.
Time, history, and the computerized society
There is good reason for believing that we are now in the early stages of one of the main irreversible changes in the history of man as we enter the computer age. No longer will it be appropriate to regard the clock as the only key-machine of the modern industrial age. In the Preface to his illuminating book Turing's man: Western Culture in the Computer Age ( 1984) David Bolter writes that 'It makes sense to examine Plato and pottery together in order to understand the Greek world, Descartes and the mechanical clock together in order to understand Europe in the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same way, it makes sense to regard the computer as a technological paradigm for the science, the philosophy, even the art of the coming generation.'4 The computer thus joins the dock as one of the two key-machines of the coming new technological age. In the current use of the word, the 'computer' is no longer just a machine for effecting numerical calculations but is far wider in its scope: in short, it has become a machine for processing all kinds of information. As Bolter points out (p. 109), 'The computer programmer is concerned about time because he wants to get a job done . . . All the elaborate mathematization of time comes down to the desire to put time to work.' Once a new technology has been invented, it tends to proceed with its own relentless logic and thus may have a lasting effect on a whole civilization. We have seen that this is what happened after the invention of the mechanical dock and this is what is now happening since the deep mathematical insight of Alan Turing ( 1912-1954) and of J. von Neumann ( 1903-1957) has led to the invention of the modern digital computer, perhaps the greatest achievement of twentieth-century technology.
The general concept of the modern computer was due originally to Charles Babbage ( 1792-1871) and Byron's daughter Lady Lovelace, but a century later Turing and von Neumann realized that it would be
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possible to succeed with the aid of electronic components, including the transistor, which was invented in 1949, where Babbage with mechanical gears had failed. One of the great differences is the fantastic speed at which the modern computer works, the times now used to release electrical charges at regular intervals being measured in nanoseconds. (A nanosecond is a billionth of a second.) As Bolter remarks (p. 101) 'The clock has been at the center of Western technology since its invention in the Middle Ages. Computer technology too finds it indispensable, although it has changed the clock from a mechanical device to a wholly electronic one.'
Whenever we try to predict the future we are compelled to make our forecasts on the basis of what we believe to be the relevant aspects of current knowledge, although this means that we are largely guided by what has already happened. Consequently, when planning for tomorrow's world it is extremely difficult for us to cast off the dead hand of the past. It has been said that 'revolution is evolution in too much of a hurry', but the evolution of science and technology has become so rapid that it must itself be regarded as 'revolutionary'! The decision process must be continually speeded up if we are to innovate effectively and at the same time cope satisfactorily with the consequences of innovation.
As long ago as 1774, in a famous speech to the electors of Bristol, Edmund Burke maintained that their task was not to choose a mere spokesman for their own opinions but to elect a delegate endowed with the freedom to make his own decisions on the various issues to be debated in Parliament. In future, our rulers will also have to exhibit both foresight and some degree of specialized knowledge when deciding on the appointment of, and the duties to be assigned to, the professional systems-analysts who will be increasingly needed to assist government in ensuring that our economy functions successfully at home and at the same time is kept competitive in world-markets. Unlike pure scientists, who must have the necessary flair to decide which details have to be discarded and which retained in order to succeed in their investigations, the systems-analyst must be trained to examine all the aspects of a particular problem, including the likely effect on people, and must never be allowed to forget that 'systems' exist for people and not people for 'systems'. In the jargon associated with the use of modern computers, the term 'system' denotes the co-operative organization of the 'hardware' (i.e. the electronic and other material components of the computer), the 'software' (i.e. its programming) and the individuals needed to perform the tasks that must be undertaken to attain the desired results.
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Frequently nowadays the use of highly sophisticated computers involves the 'selling' of time on them. In the Middle Ages this practice would have been severely frowned upon by the Church, for one of its main objections to the practice of usury was that it contravened natural law by 'selling time', and in its view time necessarily belongs to all creatures. According to the author of the Tabula exemplorum, written at the end of the thirteenth century (and according also to Duns Scotus, c. 1260-1307, in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard), 'since usurers sell nothing but the hope of money, that is, time, they are selling the day and the night. But the day is the time of light and the night the time of rest; therefore, they are selling eternal light and rest.'5
Modern industrial society is dependent on time to a greater extent than any previous civilization, except possibly the Maya, but there is a peculiar ambivalence in this dependence. Whereas our knowledge of the past of both man and the universe is far greater than that possessed by our ancestors, our feeling of continuity with the past has tended to diminish owing to the rapid and continual changes that influence our lives. For many people today time has become so fragmented that only the present appears to be significant, the past being regarded as 'out-of-date' and therefore useless. Moreover, because the present differs so much from the past, it is becoming increasingly difficult to realize what the past was like. As Hans Meyerhoff has remarked, 'The past "is being ground to pieces" by the mill of inexorable, incomprehensible change.'6
Nevertheless, despite this drastic foreshortening of temporal perspective in our daily lives that makes the present seem all-import
ant, the opposite influence prevails when, in trying to understand the nature of society and of the physical world, we believe that only by studying the past can we hope to understand the present. Consequently, nowadays the past is simultaneously devalued and enhanced in value.
This paradoxical situation is due to the dynamic nature of modern civilization. In the Middle Ages society was far more static and was essentially hierarchical in nature. As a result the causal or genetic attitude was far less important in medieval thought than it is in ours and the concept of evolution had little influence compared with the role of symbolism in the general world-view of the time. Moreover, even the concept of time itself was of less significance for historians then than it is for their successors today. We regard it as one of the first duties of the historian to date events precisely, the date being regarded by us not as an accidental property of an event but as an essential feature. This attitude, however, is comparatively modern. For St Augustine the date of an event was of far
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less importance than its theological significance. His tendency to see everything in a theological rather than in a historical perspective was a powerful influence in the Middle Ages, but during the Reformation, when papal tradition was under attack, historiography began to assume a new and strategic importance. Nevertheless, although the disputes of Protestants and Catholics stimulated much scholarly research on the past, for historians such as Bossuet the influence of divine providence was still the dominant factor, history being regarded as essentially a religious epic extending from the Creation to the Day of Judgement. Although in the sixteenth century a purely secular view of history had already been taken by Machiavelli and Guicciardini, it was not until the nineteenth century that the fundamental significance of historical perspective came to be generally recognized. This was several hundred years after the theory and practice of spatial perspective had been developed by painters and others. In each case a new way of looking at the world resulted. It was not surprising that history became a subject of major importance in its own right in the nineteenth century, for both the French revolution and the industrial revolution caused people to become far more conscious than previously of the reality and inevitability of change. They therefore felt the need to trace its progress.
Time in History: Views of Time From Prehistory to the Present Day Page 24