Tech entrepreneur Patrick Collison and economist Tyler Cowen think we need a new academic discipline focused on progress:
Progress itself is understudied. By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries. For a number of reasons, there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study. We suggest inaugurating the discipline of “Progress Studies.”
Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen
Read We Need a New Science of Progress in The Atlantic.