Idea of progress: scientific progress

The idea of progress

The notion I’m going to deal with is “the idea of progress”. To start, I would like to define the notion of progress. The progress is a forward movement, a gradual betterment and especially here the progressive development of humankind. We way wonder to what extend does progress change our vision of the others and of the world. I separate this topic in two different parts, first I will talk about social progress and then I will explain scientific progress.

        Let’s begin with social progress. Social development is very unequal all over the world. Rich countries already permit to every child the access to education by offering high quality studies and many possibilities of success for everyone. However it isn’t the case everywhere. Indeed in almost all developing and poor countries education is late. Children don’t go to school, they work very early to bring back money at home and survive with their families. Although child labor is still important in those countries, the situation is evolving and become better. For example the young girl Malala Yousafzai received the peace Nobel Prize for her success and her fight for the education of children in the world. She is the first Pakistani and the youngest person to receive this Prize. She said that this Prize is for her just a beginning because still 57 million children haven’t access to education. She said, “Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world”.

        Progress is not limited as a social betterment. It’s also an advance in scientific discoveries. Research and discovery in medical field permit to find a cure to several diseases until today lethal. Indeed, treatment against cancers is more perfected and if the disease is recognize enough early, patients have good chance to survive. Nanotechnologies offer to doctors the possibility to modify the genetic code of someone before his birth to create “perfect babies” or clones. Parents can choose several characteristics for their baby for example the color of the eyes. This is a very controversial progress in medicine community because it’s against the nature of the thinks, the genetic code of someone make him unique also I find that nobody has the right to modify it except to cure a birth problem.

        To end with the notion, I want to talk about technological progress. Innovations are created by visionaries. Those people have new ideas, they think to thinks that doesn’t exist or they try to upgrade projects. They take a lot of risk to realize them but sometimes it pay. Steve Jobs created his company Apple specialize in high-tech. Apple is one of the more powerful corporation in the world, its computers, smartphones and tablets are sell worldwide. The emergence of this type of firm can generate problems. Indeed, they are so powerful that they have an influence on stats and break sometimes the lows. For example, Google is the famous search engine on the Internet, everyone use it. The firm was accused to spying people and was condemned to pay a fined but the sum was ridiculous compared as the gravity of their acts.  

        To conclude I can say that these three aspects of progress are linked because technological progress permit scientific progress and vice versa. Furthermore the development of the Internet improved globalization which improved in turn progress because people and ideas from all over the world are bring together. However progress can be dangerous because of the power of companies on stats. The inequality of progress in the world is a reason of the increase of the gap between poor and rich even if people and organization are acting against.

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