The Source and Aim of Human Progress: A Study in Social Psychology and Social Pathology

by Boris Sidis

This book deals with the source and aim of Human Progress.If we wish social life not to become stationary and stagnant, we should give free scope to all individuality and originality, no matter how eccentric they may seem to us. We should allow free play to all opinions, doctrines, and expressions of human thought, no matter how absurd and contagious the superstitions may appear to us. New ideas, ideals, and beliefs should not be persecuted but should rather be left for discussion and criticism, because we should not assume that we are in possession of the whole truth, and that no further advance is possible. We may learn from other people who look at the world from a different angle, and thus may be able to see things in a different light which may either add to the truth which we already possess, or may even transform it by some new additional element or principle which at first may appear to us as bizarre and paradoxical... The manifestation of the apparently false opinion keeps thought awake; it constantly challenges us, making us review again and again our established truths, and contributes to an ever deeper realization of what has been gained by severe thought and hard labor. The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress. In a certain sense it may be said that it is the function of the false to keep the truth alive. The suppression of the freedom of thought or the liberty of individual expression, whether in speech or in press, is the crushing of all true human progress. Thus science, Sociology, Social Psychology, all go to confirm the same central attitude towards the free manifestation of individuality in the life existence of a well-ordered, progressive commonwealth...

142 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2010

About the author

1867-1923
Boris Sidis was a Ukrainian-American psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education. Sidis founded the New York State Psychopathic Institute and the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was the father of child prodigy William James Sidis. Boris Sidis eventually opposed mainstream psychology and Sigmund Freud, and thereby died ostracized. He was married to a maternal aunt of Clifton Fadiman, the noted American intellectual.

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Fortify the resistance of the individual by freedom of individuality and by the full development ofpersonality. Immunize the individual against social, mental plagues by the full development of his rational reflective self, controlling the suggestible, automatic subconscious with its reflex consciousness. Put no barriers to man's self expression, lay no chains on man, put no taboos on the human spirit. Do not, like the savage, run man's mind and skull into ugly shapes and distorted moulds of social traditions." B. Sidis

I think this says it all. Great read overall.