| Summary/Abstract |
The basic notions of history inherited by western academia were
influenced by what was regarded as “common sense” knowledge, even
though it was explicitly or subconsciously shaped by Biblical
chronologies and the time “ceiling” that they set for the creation of the
world. Nineteenth century positivists beginning with Auguste Comte
built a theory of evolutionary progress starting from early religious
societies, transiting through philosophically motivated ones and rising
towards the ultimate scientific stage of human rationality. Both socialists
and liberal thinkers generally held on to that vision of linear growth
from quasi-animal origins through ever higher stages of intellectual
complexity, industrialization and knowledge.
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