"Progress Studies" is probably not a great name for this effort. And I think it should probably be a DARPA-style project instead of a permanent field of study (unless some universities want to make it a permanent interdisciplinary program). But the basic idea is sound.
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Don't knock interdisciplinary research. Siloing can lead to stagnation. And don't knock mission-oriented research. It has a good track record in a lot of areas. (end)
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Replying to @Noahpinion
Can you elaborate a bit more on what your DARPA-style project would look like?
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Replying to @patrickc @Noahpinion
Hi Patrick and Noah -- if you don't mind two cents from a humanist, I think there's a key concern that needs to be addressed: whether "progress studies" can be broad enough to include competing definitions of progress. And if not, then whether it should form a scholarly agenda.
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It seems so from the article's definition: "By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living." So progress isn't just scientific discovery. /1
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Many of the critiques of the article for ignoring existing scholarship are indeed unfair: the article is very open about the fact that many people are already doing the work they are calling for, and doesn't claim the research topic itself is new. /2
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The claim is rather that the various threads of the project ought to be brought together under a new label, and it's undeniable that they don't currently exist this way. "History" contains much of this research but certainly does not think of itself as progress studies /3
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So the question is whether the label itself is new. And, with respect, it seems to me that it is not as new as the article assumes. /4
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Elsewhere on Twitter, I half-joked that Cowen ought to be a embarrassed to be channeling Karl Marx; "The goal is to treat, not merely to understand" is close in phrasing and closer in spirit to Marx's "philosophers have only interpreted the world...the point is to change it."
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And if one wants a broad, interdisciplinary movement that links academic analysis of economic and social progress with institutional formation and overt political change, there is a stunningly vast body of Marxist scholarship, with a century of research in every discipline. /6
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That’s true. But the existence of Marxist scholarship implies the possibility of *other* ideological lenses on scholarship. Why assume that Progress Studies must *include* Marxist scholarship rather than taking it as a mirror-image model?
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Hi Sarah -- I don't think we disagree. Taking something as a mirror-image model is an implicit way of acknowledging what I think Cowen and Collison should say: that what they're doing isn't new as such, but a version of the project Marxism set itself.
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