Definition of "progress" []

• Movement, as toward a goal; advance. (noun)
• Development or growth: students who show progress. (noun)
• Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization: a believer in human progress. See Synonyms at development. (noun)
• A ceremonial journey made by a sovereign through his or her realm. (noun)
• To advance; proceed: Work on the new building progressed at a rapid rate. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If there are no intelligible or describable social processes, then there may be progress, but there will be no sociology and no _methods of progress_."
• "But by progress must not be understood the imaginary and metaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of man with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a providential plan which we can logically divine and understand."
• "A human society can either fall backward or progress forward, but it cannot _progress backward_."