The idea of progress became one of the central intellectual concepts of the modern world, particularly from the Enlightenment onwards. It expressed the belief that human society could improve continuously through reason, knowledge, science, technology, education and institutional reform. Unlike earlier views that often regarded history as a cycle of rise and decline, the modern idea of progress understood history as a movement from backwardness towards a better and more advanced future. The Enlightenment played an important role in developing this concept. Thinkers such as Voltaire, Condorcet and Immanuel Kant placed human reason at the centre of social development. They challenged superstition, religious dogmatism and arbitrary authority and argued that rational inquiry