Progress
Great writing about the history of humanity
We’ve updated our list of great articles about history. Many of the new additions explore the theme of human progress, so we thought we’d present them here, together with some classics from the list:
GDP by Oliver Kim - We really don’t know how good we have it
How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life by Steven Johnson - Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism.
The Real Reason Humans are the Dominant Species by Justin Rowlatt and Laurence Knight - Energy is the key to humanity’s world domination
The Birth of Religion by Charles C. Mann - We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.
The Case Against Civilization by John Lanchester - Did our hunter-gatherer ancestors have it better?
The Worst Mistake in History by Jared Diamond - Archaeology is demolishing the belief that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress
Beyond the !Kung by Manvir Singh - A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and small-scale
A History of Violence by Steven Pinker - Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence
Money ? Happiness. QED. by Bill McKibben - The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?
What We Get Wrong about Technology by Tim Harford - Forget flying cars or humanoid robots, the most disruptive inventions are often cheap, simple and easy to overlook
How the System Works by Charles C. Mann - An essay series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life — and what happens if we don’t maintain them
The Golden Quarter by Michael Hanlon - Some of our greatest cultural and technological achievements took place between 1945 and 1971. Why has progress stalled?
Why the Age of American Progress Ended by Derek Thompson - Invention alone can’t change the world; what matters is what happens next
We Should Fix Climate Change — but We Should Not Regret It by Thomas R. Wells - Climate change is a huge and urgent problem. It is natural to suppose that it is therefore a terrible mistake, an unforced error that we should regret and try to prevent ever happening again.
Plus a couple of interesting essays about scientific progress we recommended in December, in case you missed them:
On the Importance of Staring Directly Into the Sun by Adam Mastroianni - There’s something very weird about the timeline of scientific discoveries
The Third Magic by Noah Smith - A meditation on history, science, and AI
Click through for the full list of 50 great articles about history. Let us know what we missed.
Stellar curation. The juxtaposition of Pinker's decline-of-violence thesis with Diamond's 'worst mistake' framing captures the whole tension around progress narratives. I've always found the Tim Harford piece especially insightful becasue it highlights how transformative tech is rarely the stuff we imagine in sci-fi. The banal infrastructure pieces,like shipping containers or standardized APIs actually rewire entire economies. Solid list for anyone trying to think clearly about where we've been and where trajectory points.