Charles Murray[10]
Dr. Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, another follower of the conservative direction, is an active adherent of progress, but from a somewhat different perspective compared to the previous author.
He is convinced that the idea of progress was the dominant intellectual paradigm in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is obvious from all points of view: the economic one, the technological one, even the civilizational one and the moral one. Then came the 20th century with its World Wars, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. It was as if mankind slid back. Many illusions became debunked, and an intellectual denial of progress emerged which persists into the 21st century, in Murray’s opinion; there are supposedly certain reasons for this. However, the scholar thinks that if you believe in progress, you will inevitably get to believe in some dangerous ideas.
Murray does himself believe in progress and believes it necessary to restore this idea – the idea that “history has a direction, and the aim of human actions has always been and still is to turn the Earth into a better place.” There is every reason for this, and in support of this thesis Murray reminds for starters those “five critical premises” of progress which Nisbet formulated. Let us recall them: belief in the value of the past; conviction of the nobility, even superiority, of Western civilization; acceptance of the worth of economic and technological growth; faith in reason and in the kind of scientific and scholarly knowledge that can come from reason alone; and finally, belief in the intrinsic importance, the ineffaceable worth of life on this earth.
Murray believes that all these premises are correct, and this is how he confirms them. The first premise is belief in the values of the past. The Socratic dialogues, Aristotle’s Ethics, Augustine’s City of God, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise, Spinoza’s Ethics, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, and the Federalist Papers. Compare these to 20th-century works, Murray says. In many of these books works from preceding centuries are touched on. And where is Freudianism now? Remnants are left - but only remnants. (Murray is perhaps correct on this count.) He also writes: “What is left of Marx? Virtually nothing.” (Unless you count the 80-million strong Communist Party of China whose ideology is based on Marxism.)
The second premise is the conviction of the superiority of Western civilization. This is what Murray writes in support of this notion: “Among the 7,000 events in my science and technology inventory is a stunning array of accomplishments from East Asia, overwhelmingly from China - stunning both for their importance and for the dates at which they occurred. Magnetic compasses were in use in China in 500 b.c. The first reference to their use in Europe dates from a.d. 1180. China invented the sternpost rudder, a crucial development in naval architecture; in about 200 b.c. Europe figured that one out more than 1,400 years later. …And yet it is also true that among the 7,000 items in the science and technology inventory, only 2 percent come out of East Asia. Suppose I limit the inventory to events occurring during the last millennium. In that case, 99 percent of the events come from Europe and North America and 1 percent from everywhere else. This is not a function of Eurocentrism. Nobody from any culture can come up with a list that does much to those percentages.”
“Does this vindicate the "nobility, even superiority" of Western civilization? Not by itself. But the other inventories, of music, literature, the visual arts, and philosophy, tell similar stories - some spectacularly wonderful work out of East Asia but easily lost in the profusion of accomplishment in the West. On what dimension can one make a good empirical case that Western civilization is not superior?”
The third premise is acceptance of the worth of economic and technological growth. Murray writes that many will hypocritically deny this worth, but… “On every measurable dimension of human well-being, the last three centuries have brought sensational improvement. Another way of thinking about this problem is to ask oneself this question: Can you think of any earlier moment in history in which you would prefer to live your life? At first blush the answer may be yes. For someone like me, the America of 1776 seems attractive. But then one starts to think about the reality of life in 1776. Even disregarding the big issues - life expectancy, for example - do I really want to live with eighteenth-century dentistry? Plumbing?”
The fourth premise is faith in reason, logic, science and the development of technology. On this topic Murray says that it more intriguing to examine how all these were realized in music, in fine arts and in literature. In Aristotle’s Ethics there is a small passage about human pleasures. John Rawls calls it "the Aristotelian Principle." So what does this “principle” consist in? Aristotle wrote: “Other things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities ... and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity.” In other words, what we enjoy - I use "enjoy" in its most profound sense - is using our abilities to the fullest. The Aristotelian Principle lends itself to systematic, even quantitative, investigation. Suppose, for example, that two books are given to a thousand adult individuals: Pride and Prejudice and The Bridges of Madison County. If you are intelligent, you will prefer Pride and Prejudice. Why? Because Pride and Prejudice is excellent literature indeed, while Bridges is weak fiction.
It follows from this that “Truth exists. Beauty exists. Mankind’s collective yearning for them is what makes our species worth valuing.” To those people who prefer Bridges and are bored by Pride the former is truly the better novel. It is here, however, that we encounter empirical relations between abilities and preferences; they are interconnected and permeate not only our intellect, but also our emotions. This is not merely an internal phenomenon; it manifests itself outwardly through emotions which reflect the indicated dependence. In this passage Murray really did notice an important regularity: the more intelligent a man is, the more exact and adequate are his reactions to the world around him, and this is manifest even in the sphere of his emotional reactions to some things.
The fifth postulate is belief in the worth of life on Earth. Murray thinks that this principle is not quite clear empirically, since it has to do with the scope of man’s contribution to the history of mankind. At first sight, the greatest contributions are made by major writers, poets, composers and scientists. However, we must not underestimate the importance of the activity of minor folks (carpenters, plumbers, etc.) The main thing is that they have the sense of their participation in history and feel confidence in that they do their “small things well.” One of man’s most important impulses is to understand, to find the intrinsic meaning of things. This process is gradual, imperceptible, and one doesn’t even realize at once that it has to do with progress. However, people as individuals are capable of discovering many small truths, which after some time flow, as if on the level of the genus, into the great and final Truth.
Thus the worth of life is linked to the contribution which man makes to that life – the American scientist’s premise is quite correct. Another impulse is the eternal devotion of intelligent Man to beauty. There were some among even the earliest varieties of Homo Sapiens who strived for beauty, for creating something that has no purpose except to pleasing the human eye, ear, taste or to satisfy our inherent understanding of what is beautiful. Not many of us are capable of creating beauty, but all of us possess a small corner of the soul which longs for it. The flip side of the craving for beauty is man’s striving for truth, for, as Keats put it, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” This would appear to be 19th-century Romanticism, yet it survives to our day. Of course, Murray writes, certain truths may be undesirable, and certain beauty has little relation to truth. “But in the pageant of human accomplishment, truth and beauty have been foci, ends toward which the human spirit inclines.”
Even though Murray himself did not attempt to unfold the idea of progress and proceeded from Nisbet’s premises, within that framework he substantiates sufficiently logically the inevitability of progress, except for the fifth postulate. While the premises are correct, his justification lacks a convincing system of proof. For example, man does indeed crave beauty. The question is, why?
We shall have to revisit another work of this truly major scientist with analysis of science’s contribution to progress. For the time being let us address another American – a priest. Let us see what people of God think of our subject.