In ancient Greek philosophy, there is a distinction between change (metabole) and innovation (kainotomia). Ancient philosophers such as Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato affirmed change as a divine or natural process that is gradual and continuous. The ancients rejected “innovation” as heretical and subversive precisely because it represented an intervention in the established divine or natural order. In our age, innovation has turned from heresy into idolatry. As we employ the term here, “progress”—in a politically agnostic sense—refers to a process or phenomenon that is positively
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