The Idea of Progress

By J. B. Bury

In historiography, the Idea of Progress is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the general human condition. Meaning, people can be happier in terms of quality of life through economic development and the application of scientific progress.
"To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tufts Press
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447499312

J. B. Bury

John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927) was an eminent British classical scholar and historian who wrote extensively on Greek, Roman and Byzantine history and was instrumental in the revival of Byzantine studies. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he was later made a fellow, he also gained a chair in Modern History at Trinity in 1893 and in 1898 was appointed Regius Professor of Greek. In 1902 he became Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, where he became a mentor to Sir Steven Runciman. Bury is famous for his major histories of the Roman Empire as well as his classic work The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians and his work on a new edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He also edited the Cambridge Ancient History and planned much of the Cambridge Medieval History.