Living earth crawford1/8/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() To embrace reason and empiricism, the leaders of the Scientific Revolution needed to shove aside tradition and authority. But it was also based on a new social principle: a commitment to free and open debate. The birth and growth of science, starting around the 16th century, was based on a new epistemic principle: a commitment to reason and empiricism. Industrial civilization is also founded on science: the thermodynamics of engines, the electricity that powers lights and computers, the chemistry that fertilizes our crops, the antibiotics that cure disease. And inventions, from the cotton gin to recombinant DNA, depended on the protection of the patent system. The railroads, representing a massive buildout of transportation infrastructure, depended on the new legal form of the limited-liability corporation to raise the required capital. More importantly, new and better institutions had to be created. But for such enterprises to thrive, old institutions had to be dissolved: the restrictive guild system, which often opposed new techniques the arbitrary granting of royal monopolies the corvée system of forced labor. The enormous economic growth was due in large part to increases in productivity which were brought about by private enterprise: the spinner and weaver left their cottage industry to operate machines in factories the farmer traded his horse-drawn plow for a gasoline tractor the blacksmith laid his hammer down upon his anvil and took up the steel rolling mill and press. These grand achievements are due at least in part to liberalism: free markets, free trade, free migration, and most fundamentally the free and open exchange of ideas. ) All of these metrics still have a long way to go, but they have come far in the last two centuries-further than they had in all the millennia before. And global poverty is declining by almost any metric you choose -not only in relative terms, but by many metrics, in absolute terms as well. Every continent has now achieved a food supply of over 2,600 calories per person per day. Every country on Earth today has a life expectancy higher than any country did in 1800. These benefits have not been shared evenly, but they have been shared broadly. And the ability for the majority of the globe to access virtually the entirety of world art, literature, and philosophy has enabled unprecedented intellectual and spiritual enrichment. Speedy powered transportation and instant electronic communications have connected the world like never before, to the benefit of commerce, science, education, and cultural understanding. Where almost 1% of mothers once died in childbirth, and half of all children died before the age of fifteen, child and maternal mortality today have plummeted by orders of magnitude. Famine, once relatively common, is only a distant memory in most of the world. ![]() Working conditions have improved as jobs moved from farms to factories to offices and as machines took over physical labor, while working hours declined from over 60 hours per week to under 40. In the industrialized world, the average person, who once lived without refrigerator, toilet, or running water, now has all of these conveniences many also enjoy a vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, and microwave. Since about 1800, most of the world has escaped from poverty. Understanding the history, nature, and causes of progress should be a focus for anyone who wants to defend philosophical liberalism, for three reasons.įirst, the history of progress is a validation of the modern world and its institutions. Central to this integration is the topic of human progress -specifically, the scientific, technological, industrial, and economic progress that has been dramatically raising standards of living around the world for over two hundred years. The case for a free society is a broad integration across many subjects, including history, economics, and moral philosophy.
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