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Notions of Progress

Notions of Progress

Written by: Marshall Madow
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The idea of progress — that humanity advances through time toward something better — has been a contested assumption throughout history. The question of whether we as a species, a nation, or as individuals are progressing is being interrogated with a renewed urgency that the present moment demands. Whether that advancement is real, illusory, unevenly distributed, or simply beside the point depends on who is asking, from where, and by what measure. Notions of Progress is a podcast that takes those questions seriously, tracing how the idea of progress has been understood, contested, and reimagined from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. The series moves from the ancient Greeks’ ambivalence about technological change, through the Enlightenment’s confidence in cumulative human reason, to the contemporary moment in which artificial intelligence has made the question of progress newly urgent. When machines appear to learn, create, and reason, the assumptions buried inside the word “progress” — about agency, direction, and human advancement — are no longer abstract. Tracing how those assumptions formed, and how they have been challenged across centuries, is the work of this podcast. Rather than prescribing a position, it surfaces the debates — examining how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, from Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, for whom, and by whose definition. The thread connecting Plato’s Academy to the age of artificial intelligence is not a straight line of accumulation — it is a recurring argument about whether progress is something driven by human agency, providence, or an artificial consciousness we project onto history rather than find in it. Host Marshall Madow brings an unusual dual formation to these questions. His MA in History from Cambridge University — where his thesis examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth and the role of ideas in animating collective action — gave him a grounding in how belief systems about progress can function in place of rational thinking as historical forces. His MSc from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, specializing in Complexity Science and Leadership, introduced him to the question from the other direction: how systems evolve, how change propagates through institutions, and why linear models of advancement are often insufficient in explaining complex phenomena. The two areas of study point toward the same problem from opposite ends. Notions of Progress is the inquiry that connects them. Marshall approaches the podcast as a scholar, researcher, and curator — seeking to surface a pluralistic and wide-ranging spectrum of ideas rather than prescribing or advocating one position over another. Contact: marshall@notionsofprogress.com Social: @notionsofprogress on Instagram · @NotionsProgress on X/Twitter Web: notionsofprogress.comCopyright 2026 Notions of Progress Philosophy Science Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Aristotle on Human Nature — Blueprint vs. Destiny

    Aristotle on Human Nature — Blueprint vs. Destiny
    Jul 17 2026
    Aristotle claimed that human beings have a built-in purpose — but is that idea a foundation for a good life, or a blueprint for control? This episode, the second half of a two-part look at Aristotle, brings five thinkers into the conversation across twenty-five centuries of philosophy. Karl Popper, writing in the shadow of the Second World War, warns that a fixed idea of human purpose can curdle into political destiny when scaled up from a person to a nation. Alasdair MacIntyre, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippa Foot each answer that worry on different grounds — through practices and internal goods, through practical judgment exercised case by case, and through a naturalist argument about what genuinely counts as good for a living creature. Finally, philosopher of technology Shannon Vallor carries the same question directly into the debate over artificial intelligence, arguing that practical wisdom — phronesis — is exactly what current AI narratives are trying to convince us we no longer need. Five serious perspectives, one shared question, five different answers — and a closing turn toward the instability that follows Aristotle's world, setting up the series' next arc: the Hellenistic philosophers.2. Show Notes & Timestamps— Aristotle's Big Question — 00:00— Five Thinkers Setup — 01:16— Key Terms: Telos & Phronesis — 02:35— Popper Against Historicism — 03:24— MacIntyre: Practices & Virtue — 06:35— Foot: Natural Goodness — 15:17— Vallor: Aristotle Meets AI — 18:53— Recap: Five Perspectives — 26:07— What Comes Next — 28:54— Sources and Farewell — 29:593. Key Concepts & TermsTelos (TEH-los)A thing's built-in purpose — for a living creature, the end its nature is directed toward.Phronesis (froh-NEE-sis)Practical wisdom — not a rule that can be memorized and applied the same way every time, but the skill of judging what a particular situation actually calls for, right now.Eudaimonia (yoo-dye-MOH-nee-uh)Human flourishing — a life lived well by doing what a human being is actually for, rather than simply feeling good in the moment.Epieikeia (eh-pee-ay-KAY-ah)Equity — a judge's correction of the strict letter of the law when applying it in full would be wrong in a specific case. Aristotle treats this as a correction of the law, not a departure from it.4. Fascinating Historical InsightsPopper's Postwar TargetKarl Popper published The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. His historicism critique takes direct aim at Hegel's later use of Aristotle's ideas — Popper is explicit that Aristotle's own biology, considered on its own terms, is not his target.A Child, a Chessboard, and CandyAlasdair MacIntyre's account of virtue turns on a simple example: a child taught to play chess for candy has every reason to cheat, right up until the point they come to value the internal rewards of the game itself — at which point cheating stops making sense at all.The Most Alarming Person in the RoomAristotle has a specific word, deinos, for someone with real natural gift for practical judgment and no virtue guiding it. Following Aristotle, Gadamer argues this person is more alarming than someone simply incompetent — brilliant talent turned toward evil, rather than a lack of skill.A Senate Room and a Distorting MirrorIn November 2023, Shannon Vallor testified before the U.S. Senate that current AI narratives risk convincing people that phronesis — the virtue Aristotle called practical wisdom — is an outdated relic. A year later, in The AI Mirror, she opened her book with the story of a Google engineer who claimed the company's AI had become conscious, treating the episode as a symptom of the very confusion her testimony warned against.5. Resources & Further ReadingPrimary Sources— Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsWorks Discussed— Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2 (Princeton University Press, 1945), Ch. 11, pp. 220–226— Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, 2007), Ch. 9, pp. 109–120, and Ch. 14, pp. 187–190 and 196–197— Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 313–320— Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), Introduction and Ch. 1— Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford, 2016), Sections 2.1 and 5.2— Shannon Vallor, The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford, 2024), Introduction and Ch. 1Further Context— Shannon Vallor, Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, November 8, 20236. Related Episodes— Episode 14: Aristotle, Telos, and the Good Life — What Human Flourishing Actually Means (Part 1) — the foundation this episode builds on— Episodes 11–13: Interview with Matt Ehret — Aristotle at the Academy, and the open/closed systems framing this arc extends7. ...
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    16 mins
  • Aristotle, Telos, and the Good Life: What Human Flourishing Actually Means pt. 1

    Aristotle, Telos, and the Good Life: What Human Flourishing Actually Means pt. 1
    Jun 29 2026
    In the last three episodes, Matt Ehret argued that the history of progress is a contest between two competing visions of civilization: one that develops its internal capacities, and one that manages and depletes them. At the center of that argument was a framework introduced in Episode 11 — the open system and the closed system. That framework raised a question we deliberately set aside: what exactly is being opened or closed? What is the standard by which we judge whether a civilization is developing or declining?Aristotle has an answer. And it begins with a question most modern philosophy has stopped asking: what is a human being for?This episode works through three ideas. First: how Aristotle understands the relationship between activity and the good. Second: what he means by telos — the end or purpose internal to a form of life — and why it is grounded in nature rather than assigned from outside. Third: a challenge posed by Karl Popper that Part 2 must answer — whether any fixed account of human ends is compatible with an open society.Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s reading in After Virtue and Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness, the episode traces what telos means, why it is grounded in nature, and why a critical distinction — between how we come to know things and what we fundamentally are — is essential before the argument can proceed. A key editorial note: Aristotle holds that the intellect begins without innate content (the tabula rasa of the De Anima). But that is a claim about how we come to know things — not a claim about what we are. MacIntyre’s entire defense of Aristotle turns on keeping those two levels separate.The episode closes with Popper’s charge: that Aristotle’s account of fixed ends generates the intellectual architecture of the closed society. That charge is not answered here. It is posed as the question Part 2 must address.Show Notes & Timestamps• Open vs Closed Systems — 0:00• Telos and Flourishing — 1:26• Three Key Terms — 1:57• Every Action Aims at a Good — 4:08• MacIntyre on Virtue — 4:59• Eudaimonia and the Virtues — 6:42• Suspicion of Fixed Ends — 8:28• Foot’s Natural Goodness — 9:38• Tabula Rasa Clarified — 11:21• Popper’s Closed Society Critique — 13:54• Can Telos Stay Open? — 17:23• Wrap Up and Part 2 Preview — 18:39Key Concepts & TermsTelos (TEL-os)From the Greek, meaning end or purpose. According to MacIntyre’s reading of Aristotle, the telos of a thing is the end that is internal to its form of life — what it means for a thing of that kind to be functioning well. A telos is not a goal you choose. It is what you are oriented toward by virtue of what you are.Eudaimonia (yoo-die-MOH-nee-ah)Often translated as happiness, but more precisely: flourishing. For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the full realization of what human beings are capable of. MacIntyre argues that the virtues — courage, justice, temperance, practical wisdom — are not merely instrumental to eudaimonia but partly constitutive of it. Eudaimonia is a form of life you inhabit, not a feeling to be produced.Phronesis (froh-NEE-sis)Practical wisdom — the capacity to judge well in particular situations. Named and seeded in this episode; developed in depth in Part 2 and in the upcoming episode with Professor Atif Ansar, where it will do real analytical work.Tabula rasa (TAB-yoo-lah RAH-sah)Blank slate. Aristotle holds in the De Anima that the intellect begins without innate content. This episode draws a critical distinction: tabula rasa describes how we come to know things, not what we are. A blank slate in terms of knowledge is entirely compatible with a determinate natural form.Fascinating Historical InsightsAristotle’s opening moveAristotle opens the Nicomachean Ethics not with a principle or a commandment but with an observation: every activity, every inquiry, every pursuit aims at some good. MacIntyre frames this as the foundational move of the Aristotelian tradition. Where Enlightenment moral philosophy begins from rules — what should I do, and why should I obey? — Aristotle begins from character: what kind of person should I become, and what does it mean for a human being to be living well?MacIntyre’s diagnosticMacIntyre argues in After Virtue that the shift from virtue to rule-following is the defining mark of what went wrong in modern ethics. Rules without a prior account of what human beings are for cannot carry the moral weight we ask of them. The virtues — on his reading of Aristotle — are not just means to a separate end. They are partly constitutive of what living well actually is.Foot’s wolfPhilippa Foot’s Natural Goodness begins with a simple example: a wolf that cannot run is, in a perfectly straightforward sense, a bad wolf — not because we disapprove of it, but because it is failing to be ...
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    11 mins
  • Interview with Matt Ehret Pt. 3: Plato vs. Aristotle: The Divide That Still Shapes How We Think

    Interview with Matt Ehret Pt. 3: Plato vs. Aristotle: The Divide That Still Shapes How We Think
    Jun 15 2026
    What if the divide between Plato and Aristotle is not a chapter in the history of philosophy — but a structural fault line that still determines how civilizations think about knowledge, progress, and discovery? In the final part of his three-part conversation, Matt Ehret presents his argument that this ancient divide carries forward as a kind of civilizational operating system — one whose consequences extend from the classical world to the present, and whose terms determine whether a culture tends toward genuine intellectual advance or toward increasingly sophisticated forms of stagnation.In this concluding episode, Ehret examines what he sees as the core methodological difference between Plato and Aristotle: a verb-driven, process-oriented universe oriented toward discovery, versus a noun-driven, classification-based framework built on closed axioms that cannot be questioned. He develops the open versus closed systems distinction — with entropy and anti-entropy as the evaluative frame — arguing that the Platonic tradition keeps inquiry alive while the Aristotelian method, however elegant, forecloses the kind of creative discovery that genuine progress requires. The conversation closes with Plato’s Republic Book II, the question of poetry and the arts, and the image of Plato as a thinker conducting an open dialogue across twenty-five centuries. This episode closes the Ehret arc and opens directly onto the Aristotle episodes ahead.Show Notes & Timestamps1. Introduction — 0:402. Aristotle vs. Plato — The Core Difference — 1:323. The Aristotelian Method and Loss of Free Will — 2:024. Human Agency and the Two Wolves — 5:585. Open vs. Closed Systems — Entropy and Anti-Entropy — 9:026. Plato's Republic and the Consequences of Closed Thinking — 13:577. Plato in Today's Media World — 17:488. Closing and Outro — 20:16 Key Concepts & TermsNoun-driven vs. verb-driven universe (nown-driv-en / verb-driv-en) — Two orientations toward realityEhret’s foundational contrast distinguishes how the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions approach the nature of reality. A verb-driven, process-oriented framework treats the world as dynamic, discoverable, and open to creative inquiry. A noun-driven, classification-based framework treats reality as something to be mapped, labeled, and described within fixed categories. For Ehret, everything follows from this distinction: the method shapes the questions a culture can ask, the discoveries it can make, and ultimately the direction of its progress.A priori method (AH-pree-OR-ee) — Reasoning from closed, unquestionable starting pointsEhret describes the Aristotelian a priori method as beginning with a set of core axioms, postulates, and definitions that are accepted as perfect and closed before inquiry begins. Upon these fixed building blocks, the thinker then attempts to make sense of the discoverable world. Ehret’s argument is that this approach is not neutral: the axioms themselves determine what can be found, and because they are placed beyond question, what lies outside them cannot enter the system. The result, in his reading, is a kind of organized blindness — increasingly sophisticated in its internal logic, but increasingly detached from genuine discovery.Entropy and anti-entropy (EN-troh-pee / an-tee-EN-troh-pee) — Closed systems running down versus open systems generating new potentialEhret draws on the physical concept of entropy — the tendency of a closed system to exhaust its energy and move toward stagnation — as a frame for evaluating philosophical traditions. A closed-system framework, on this reading, is entropic: its potential for discovery decreases over time as the fixed axioms progressively constrain what can be thought. An anti-entropic framework, by contrast, remains open to creative inputs and new discoveries, increasing its potential rather than exhausting it. Ehret applies this distinction not only to philosophy but to civilizations as a whole, arguing that cultures organized around closed-system thinking tend toward Malthusian constraints, while those oriented toward open inquiry tend toward genuine advance.Civilizational operating system — The underlying framework through which a culture organizes knowledge and inquiryThis is Ehret’s central thesis for the episode: that the Plato—Aristotle divide is not a historical debate between two ancient thinkers, but a structural feature of how civilizations organize their relationship to knowledge. The operating system metaphor captures the idea that the framework runs beneath the surface of any particular cultural, political, or scientific development — shaping what questions get asked, what counts as an answer, and what kind of progress is possible. Ehret argues that identifying which operating system a culture is running is the prerequisite for understanding whether it is genuinely advancing or producing increasingly elaborate ...
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    11 mins
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