It is quite impossible for us to put ourselves in the world before the telescope. The days before Newton.

Newton explained the universe in terms of gravity.

But so did the pre-Newtonian world.

Everybody felt gravity, so everyone wondered how the hell those stars stayed UP there.

Which made prediction impossible. You simply cannot CONCEIVE of the real universe until you realize those lights up there have their own gravity.

To use Horus’ invaluable terminology, you simply cannot conceive of reality if you insist on a closed system.

To me the world of Mommy Professor is as silly as the world where the universe was held up there by some structure.

Mommy Professor talks about Progress. By definition, one who speaks of Progress must know exactly which way Inevitability is Progressing.
So Progress in the thirteenth century was finding out what held that Sky up there in defiance of gravity. It occurred to nobody that that Sky was up there BECAUSE of gravity.

This makes open system thinking very, very difficult. One thing we should know by now is that not only will the information change, but that just as inevitably our entire view of everything, physics and human nature among them, will change.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the very reality you block out when you use the word “progressive.”