← Table of contents
The Birth of Civilization in the Near East

Note 21 — I. THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

Reading edition

R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 328-30, especially 328-9. “There is only one genuine meaning for this question. If thought in its first phase, after solving the initial problems of that phase, is then, through solving these, brought up against others which defeat it; and if the second solves these further problems without losing its hold on the solution of the first, so that there is gain without any corresponding loss, then there is progress. And there can be progress on no other terms. If there is any loss, the problem of setting loss against gain is insoluble.”

Explore with AITake your curiosity a little further.

Reading settings