Anglais bac : idea of progress

Today, I’m going to talk about the idea of progress. For me the progress is the development of society in certain fields. Progress has existed since man exists and I think he will exist as long as man exists. There are many kinds of progress.

So first of all I will talk about the technical progress. It depends on advanced science, that’s why I'm going to use Rosalind Franklin to explain that to you. She is a British physicist and chemist born July 25, 1920 in Notting Hill and died April 16, 1958 in Chelsea. Rosalind Franklin wanted to be scientist ever since she was a teenager which wasn’t a common career path for a girl. She won a scolarship to Cambridge to study chemistry, where she earned her PHD ( Philosophiæ doctor ). Back to the United Kingdom in 1951, she studied DNA fibers by X-ray diffraction at King's College of London in the department headed by John Randall. It is then that she develops the first models of the structure of the DNA which will be used later by other researchers to discover DNA. After her death, 3 men get a Nobel prize partly thanks to her.

Another example of technical progress is the Californian company Hyperloop's project : to transport goods and passengers at a maximum speed of 750 mph, a pace who could reduce the 400 kilometer journey between Los Angeles and San Francisco to less than 'one o'clock.

But the technical progress is not the only type of progress there is also the medical progress of which I will speak to you now.

A man whose ideas could have save a lot of life. I want to talk about Ignace Semmelweis. He was born on July 1, 1818 in Ofen and died in Döbling, near Vienna on August 13, 1865. He was a Hungarian obstetrician doctor who worked for hygiene. At this time many women in maternity wards were dying from puerperal fever. So he started looking for why. But before finding the reason and the solution he tried several idiot hypotheses like for example asking a priest to change his way when he walked because he thought that the sound of the bell and the sight of the priest terrified the women. When he found the solution (washing his hands and tools) the other doctors disagreed and criticized him, which made many people renounced to wash their hands. That’s why he could have save a lot of life.

Finally I will talk about social progress. To illustrate this progress I will take the story of Mildred Jeter, a black woman and Richard Perry a white man. In June 1958, they married in the District of Columbia. They are from Virginia, which is one of 16 states prohibiting inter racial marriage. That's why on their return to Virginia they were arrested and condemned to either one year in prison or the prohibition to return to Virginia for 25 years. They decided to leave Virginia. After that, they decided to write to the Supreme Court of the United States. After reading the letter, the Supreme Court of the United States deeming the injustice unjustly and she decided to retry the trial, which ends this time with an abolition of the prohibition of inter racial marriage in the United States.

To conclude, progress is omnipresent in any field or period of time. The human will continue to progress as it has already done for thousands of years and may find one day a limit to the progress.

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