An overview of the concepts of change and development - from the premodern to modern era

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the concepts of change and progress: on one hand, it approaches this topic from the point of view of the history of science; on the other hand, from the point of view of modern developmental psychology. The section on the history of science focuses on the historical period of the pre-modern Hellenistic era to the Enlightenment. This period is long, and it therefore includes several, different world views and cultural trends. In this chapter culturally significant trends of thought within the PtolemaicAristotelic tradition are described.The section on the modern developmental psychology approach analyses the following questions: (1) which characteristics must changes – namely cognitive changes – have in order to be considered “developmental”, (2) how developmental and learning theories, grounded in different philosophical frameworks, view the concepts of change and development, and (3) how change and development are currently studied by developmental scholars. Weak and strong conceptions of development in particular are emphasised. In the conclusion, the concepts of progress, change, and development are discussed using classification of world hypotheses and unitideas (family resemblances) in the history of Ideas.