Η «πρόοδος» και η «επιστήμη»: ανατέμνοντας το κυρίαρχο φαντασιακό του Δυτικού Κόσμου

Abstract

In this paper I will examine how the term progress becomes the basic word that describe a whole linear conception of history, which, although it starts from the eschatological origins of Christian doctrine, has as its basic foundation the perception that the course of the world's development has as its final stage and centre the Western World and the developments achieved within him (a perception which in the post-revolutionary landscape of ideas finds its 'philosophical armouring' in the work of Hegel). On this 'secular' view and the gradual de-metaphysicalisation of the post-medieval world, science was equally structured as a word and meaning, which, although in the early days as scientia it held the meaning of an 'intellectual virtue' linked to religion (religio), later separated from her, and was crucially linked to 'progress'. Through this paper, therefore, Ι will try to highlight, by carrying out a necessary genealogical retrospection based on the history of ideas and concepts: a) the early meaning and development of progress and science as concepts, and b) the later secularized reception of these two lexical signs in modernity and in the contemporary post-modern world, and in the end we will try to draw the necessary accompanying conclusions in the course of our analysis.

Keywords

• progress, science, middle ages, modernity, post-modernity, western word