ABSTRACT
The growth of knowledge fuelled by those experiments of living is apparently central to Mill’s account of human progress or development. ‘For Mill’, says Gray, ‘progress is an inherent tendency of the human mind, with historical development being controlled ultimately by innovation in the realm of ideas. What is most noteworthy is that the growth of knowledge is theorized as an autonomous tendency of the mind’ (ibid., p. 227), manifested in the conception and implementation of experiments of living by critically detached individuals.
