When Cowen & Collison coined the term “progress studies” in 2019, some questioned why such a concept was needed, given the existence of economics, history, etc. They argued that an interdisciplinary approach was still useful: “Plenty of existing scholarship touches on these topics, but it takes place in a highly fragmented fashion….”
Recently I’ve been researching and outlining a chapter for my book on the topic of “Can Progress Continue?” I think the full answer to this question is an integration of history, philosophy, and economics. In particular, I’ve found it useful to incorporate:
- Economic growth theory, especially the work of Solow, Romer, and Jones
- The stagnation debate, including the work of Cowen and Gordon (and counterpoints by “techno-optimists” such as McAfee and Brynjolfsson)
- The broader history of economic thought going back to late 18th-century thinkers such as Malthus
- The economics of resources as per Julian Simon
- The history of predictions of resource depletion and concerns about overpopulation
- The economic history of technological shifts from one resource to another
- The philosophy of humans as problem-solvers vs. resource-creators articulated by Deutsch
- The philosophy of the concept of “sustainability”
- Long-term trends in and future predictions of world population growth
- Hard limits to very long-term growth based on physical law
I think integrating all of these puzzle pieces and perspectives results in the clearest possible answer to this important question, and I think this is true for many other questions of interest to the progress community.