The Invention of Progress: The Victorians and the Past

A comprehensive survey of the Victorians exploration of the past which shows how the idea of progress was developed in two rival forms which expressed liberal and conservative social values. Whether in history, prehistory or the fossil record, the past could be visualized either as a continuous progression or as a sequence of distinct cycles or epiodes. The author argues that the controversies surrounding the "Darwinian Revolution" can be interpreted as the inevitable consequence of the Victorians' attempt to extend these models of history into the more distant past. Darwinian and non-Darwinian theories of evolution provided "scientific" foundations for rival views of human nature already expressed in the field of social history.