The Idea of Progress - Softcover

Bury, J. B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1466496401 ISBN 13: 9781466496408

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Synopsis

John Bagnell Bury (1861-1927), known as J. B. Bury, was an eminent Irish historian, classical scholar, Byzantinist and philologist. Bury was born and raised in Clontibret, County Monaghan. He was educated first by his parents, then at Foyle College in Derry and Trinity College in Dublin, where he graduated in 1882 and was made a fellow in 1885. In 1893 he gained a chair in modern history at Trinity College, which he held for nine years, thereafter joining the Cambridge University. Bury's writings, on subjects ranging from ancient Greece to the 19th-century papacy, are at once scholarly and accessible to the layman. His two works on the philosophy of history elucidated the Victorian ideals of progress and rationality which undergirded his more specific histories. He also led a revival of Byzantine history, which English-speaking historians, following Edward Gibbon, had largely neglected. He contributed to, and was himself the subject of an article in, the 1911 Encyclopędia Britannica. Among his most famous works are: A History of Freedom of Thought (1914) and The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (1920).

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From the Back Cover:

The notion that human civilization is progressing, is naturally moving from a more primitive state to a more evolved one, seems so obvious to us that it bears reminding that this was not always true: the concept did not exist before the Enlightenment. In fact, as renowned historian J.B. Bury explains in this classic work, first published in 1920, the idea of progress was antithetical to the thinking of the ancients, who saw history as an unstoppable decline from a previous Golden Age. How did we shift from such pessimism to the current assumption, and how has it altered human civilization? Drawing on the writings of such thinkers from Malthus and Descartes to Darwin and Marx--and many others--Bury explores how all fields of human thought from philosophy to physics have been changed by the idea of progress. British historian JOHN BAGNELL BURY (1861-1927) was professor of modern history at Cambridge. His writings, known for a readability combined with a scholarly depth, include History of the Later Roman Empire (1889), History of Greece (1900), and A History of Freedom of Thought (1913).

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1466496401
• ISBN 13: 9781466496408
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 194