(Click the image for a LIGHTBOX view)
PREFACE
Beginning with Bury’s classic The Idea of Progress, the arguments advanced in favor of (or opposed to) the idea of progress have been expository: books and essays designed to present the case in written form. As a consequence, the works presented to substantiate (or refute) the idea of progress have been almost exclusively technical — the printing press, electric lighting, medicine, internal combustion engines — whose benefits and consequences have been presented in both quantitative and qualitative terms as proof that such advances have, as a whole, benefitted the human race.
The five works presented on “Masterworks of Progress” offer another perspective on the creative presentation of the idea of progress in media other than argumentative prose: Architecture, Sculpture, Film, Graphic Art and Statistics.
