Disentangling organic and technological progress: An epistemological clarification introducing a key distinction between two levels of axiology.

The notion of "progress" can be defined as a directional change towards the better, implying both a descriptive and an axiological element. "Organic progress" refers to this notion applied to the history of life, whereas "technological progress" refers to this notion applied to the history of technological artifacts. This paper aims to disentangle conceptual questions about the notion of organic progress with respect to evolutionary theory, by proposing an epistemological perspective that also accounts for technological progress. My argument is set out in four sections. In section 2, drawing on the thought of some eminent evolutionary biologists, I will pinpoint a theoretical claim according to which a specific notion of organic progress is consistent with evolutionary theory. In section 3, I show some limits and problems that arise in the application of this theoretical claim to the organic domain. In section 4, I consider why these problems with application are often underestimated: I hypothesize that this is linked to the analogy frequently made between organic and technological progress. Finally, in section 5, I will carry on the analysis of this analogy by proposing a distinction between two levels of axiology. I claim that this distinction avoids several common confusions when talking about progress.