The 20th century was seduced by the idea that humans will advance as part of a collective and that the enlightened few have the right—the duty even—to impose progress on the benighted masses whether they choose it or not. The blood of millions and the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago this year, showed how much the people beg to differ. Coercion will always have its attractions for those able to do the coercing, but, as a source of enlightened progress, the subjugation of the individual in the interests of the community has lost much of its appeal.

Instead the modern age has belonged to material progress and its predominant source has been science. Yet nestling amid the quarks and transistors and the nucleic acids and nanotubes, there is a question. Science confers huge power to change the world. Can people be trusted to harness it for good?

The ancients thought not. Warnings that curiosity can be destructive stretch back to the very beginning of civilisation. As Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, so inquisitive Pandora, the first woman in Greek mythology, peered into the jar and released all the world’s evils.

Modern science is full of examples of technologies that can be used for ill as well as good. Think of nuclear power—and of nuclear weapons; of biotechnology—and of biological contamination. Or think, less apocalyptically, of information technology and of electronic surveillance. History is full of useful technologies that have done harm, intentionally or not. Electricity is a modern wonder, but power stations have burnt too much CO2-producing coal. The internet has spread knowledge and understanding, but it has also spread crime and pornography. German chemistry produced aspirin and fertiliser, but it also filled Nazi gas chambers with Cyclon B.

The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily onto progress for humanity...

...Nor does economic progress broadly defined correspond to human progress any more precisely than does scientific progress. GDP does not measure welfare; and wealth does not equal happiness. Rich countries are, by and large, happier than poor ones; but among developed-world countries, there is only a weak correlation between happiness and GDP. And, although wealth has been soaring over the past half a century, happiness, measured by national surveys, has hardly budged.

That is probably largely because of status-consciousness. It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too. Once they have filled their bellies and put a roof over their heads, people want more of what Fred Hirsch, an economist who worked on this newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s, called “positional goods”. Only one person can be the richest tycoon. Not everyone can own a Matisse or a flat in Mayfair. As wealth grows, the competition for such status symbols only becomes more intense.

And it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it properly—with the result that, in important ways, their children may not be better off than they are. The forests are disappearing; the ice is melting; social bonds are crumbling; privacy is eroding; life is becoming a dismal slog in an ugly world.

All this scepticism, and more, is on display in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Brave New World”, the two great British dystopian novels of the 20th century...

...At the end of Madach’s poem, Adam is about to throw himself off a cliff in despair, when he glimpses redemption. First Eve draws near to tell him that she is to have a child. Then God comes and gently tells Adam that he is wrong to try to reckon his accomplishments on a cosmic scale. “For if you saw your transient, earthly life set in dimensions of eternity, there wouldn’t be any virtue in endurance. Or if you saw your spirit drench the dust, where could you find incentive for your efforts?” All God asks of man is to strive for progress, nothing more. “It is human virtues I want,” He says, “human greatness.”

Ms Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy. Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor is it hopeless. Instead, it is up to us. "