On incremental improvement and revolutionary change

We tend to think of progress as a straight line: a smooth, steady climb from past to future, from old to new.

But progress is not without resistance. History doesn’t always flow, it often wrestles. Messy and sometimes unpredictable, evolution moves forward against opposition.

As with scientific advancement, progress isn’t always gradual and incremental, as philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn noticed. Within a ‘paradigm’ - a shared way of seeing, thinking, and understanding - knowledge accumulates steadily, building on what we already know and incrementally improving our understanding of the world.

Until it doesn’t.

Every system eventually reaches its boundaries. Contradictions emerge. Paradoxes surface.

Conflicting narratives clash as we encounter the limits of what can be thought, understood, and communicated.

The framework that enables us - that helps us experience and make sense of the world - now struggles to cope. If the limits of my language are the limits of my world, then broadening my horizons demands a new language, a new way of seeing.

Sometimes incremental improvement isn’t enough. Progress grinds to a halt, and the only way forward is radical reimagination.

At these breaking points, the old way collapses under its own weight, making space for something else. Reinvention becomes unavoidable, and a revolution takes place.

Giving birth to a fundamentally different way to think, see, and speak about the world. One that integrates the old narratives, expands on them, and transforms our understanding of everything.

Progress is both a birth and a duel: a dance between the old and the new, and a conversation between gradual steps and seismic leaps.

Steady and incremental until only revolution can clear the path forward.