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Joel Mokyr: Progress Isn't Natural - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 2,172 words · saved by 1 readers

Humans invented it—and not that long ago.

How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers and other erudite scholars with endless explanations. One way of looking at the question is by examining something basic, and arguably essential: the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress. Such a belief may seem self-evident today, but most people in the more-remote past believed that history moved in some kind of cycle or followed a path that was determined by higher powers. The idea that humans should and could wor

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