* An extract from Issue 2 of the Newsletter on "Measuring the Progress of Societies".

[A Naturalistic Approach to the Narrative of Progress]
By Mattia Gallotti, University of California at Berkeley, USA

Social change is a challenging issue in modern democracies. Few theorists agree on how to account for its nature and main causes, this often results in wrongheaded and ineffective policies. A longstanding area of debate surrounds defining the goal of collective change, namely progress. The narrative of progress is built upon powerful symbolic representations in various debates. However, I argue that the so-called naturalistic stance offers a more compelling explanation of why the myth of progress is so deeply embedded in the cultural heritage of modern democracies.

Naturalism is the view that fundamental issues concerning human life should be explored with the methods of empirical research. The approach is essentially multi-disciplinary and integrative, and applies equally to issues in the natural sciences and humanities. But how can naturalism help understand progress and social change?

A good starting point is to clarify what we mean by a narrative of progress. The idea of progress is based on key representations and shared meanings concerning well-being and human development. It should not be surprising after all that this narrative is so entrenched that it appears natural to us. Moreover, Social processes depend upon the biological endowment of built-in cognitive capacities that people possess at birth. Here is the missing link that ties social discourse to the scientific worldview: narrative structures are written down in the biology of the brain.

As several neuroscientists have shown, the mind works differently from the way it has been traditionally depicted. It is less the logical and fully rational "calculator" processing decisions in predictable ways than we might have thought of. Rather, emotions gut feelings and long-held views play a decisive role in the making of choices.

In other word, the understanding of the 'unconscious' may give important insights into the structure of narratives upon which public discourse is built. So, one of the most striking achievements in the study of the biology of the mind (brain) is to have provided explanatory frameworks to address classical challenges in the social sciences. Understanding the workings of the brain can help explain the way we think about progress. It can also shed light on the way people process statistical information to assess whether progress is being made.

A key question of the second OECD World Forum on "Statistics, Knowledge and Policy" concerned the role official statistics - as opposed to bias, habit and prejudice - play in affecting policies targeted at progress. And access to data was seen as a necessary condition to assess life conditions. But progress is not just a number after all, it is rather a complex story based on symbols and meanings.

Thus, understanding the mind is crucial to shedding light on the cognitive mechanisms which process data. French cognitive scientist Stanislas Dehaene has been engaged for fifteen years in using imaging technologies to test the hypothesis that human beings come equipped with a natural ability to process numbers. His evidence shows that our brain is wired for mathematics. Dehaene's work is important because it shows us how to approach a question of social impact by exploring biological causes from a naturalistic perspective.

Public actors have yet to come to terms with the implications of the cognitive revolution in the political arena. At stake is a new narrative of what it means to be human in a post-ideological era. Issues that have played a prominent role in the past like social classes and material conditions as well as race and gender, are doomed to lose much of their historical relevance. The mind is already shaping the new battlefield here challenges and divides will thrive for years to come.

* For further information, please visit www.oecd.org/progress/newsletter.