This is a congress in which orthopedic surgeons meet to learn, to discuss new techniques, and to discard obsolete techniques. This is an act of faith. Our faith is that the future can be better than the past, this is a faith in Progress.

Mankind has not always been searching for new things. The longest period of time in the history of man has been one of cyclic time. This means that man was doing what man had always been doing. A First Ancestor had done everything for the first time at the beginning of the world, in the “dreamtime,” as say the aboriginals of Australia.

Of course, some peculiar men did invent new ways of feeding themselves, new techniques to cut stones, or better devices to hunt their prey. Modern anthropologists studying the societies that still rely on hunt and prick and still have no history have found that those of the same generation do know who has invented a peculiar technique. Their children think that this technique has always been around and the third generation has invented a myth that explains why and in which circumstances the First Ancestor has first used the technique (1).

So, there was no progress at all in these times. Even if an external observer could have described the apparition of something new, society in these times did not have room for progress.

Then, man wrote history. By itself, it meant a dramatic change in perspective. To have history written was, for the king, to try to be remembered for his deeds. With history, his deeds were his, and not anybody else’s. Society by itself did not value change. The place of all men was known before birth, and everybody was supposed to keep his place.

The quest for the new may be traced back, in our civilization, to the Renaissance. This quest was associated with a quest of the past, with a quest of the old Greek and Roman thinkers. This quest for a forgotten past was, in itself, a quest for the new. The old texts were not read anymore, so the search for them was a quest for new ideas. New was stimulating, and the world began to change.

For Hobbes, “felicity involves continual progress; it consists in prospering, not in having prospered; there is no such thing as a static happiness—excepting, of course, the joys of heaven, which surpass our comprehension.(2)”

Happiness needs an evolving society; this does not mean that a society without progress cannot exist, but that man cannot live happily in such a society. Progress was man-made.

Some men did not want to keep their places, nor did they accept living in a society that has forgotten its own values. Reformation occurred, and this process brought us the Declaration of Independence and the Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen.

Later, man began to “believe in progress as an universal law.(3)” Darwin, with his introduction of the theory of evolution, made progress the observed result of variation and selection of the fittest according to a specific environment. Political and philo-sophical liberalism quickly endorsed the new theory.

“There is, however, [an] aspect of liberalism which was greatly strengthened by the doctrine of evolution, namely the belief in progress. So long as the state of the world allowed optimism, evolution was welcomed by liberals […](4)”

Progress also became a central dogma of Marxism: Whatever was done, the perfect society shall come. Progress was not man-made anymore, it was the inevitable tide of history.