Talk:Progressive

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The most common use of 'progressive' in a political sense refers to a person/idea/group that favors progressivism. This essential political meaning somehow disappeared entirely during the MOSDAB 'reformatting'. It is inadequate to merely have a SEE ALSO pointing to 'progressivism' when this is the essential political sense of 'progressive'. I don't think MOSDAB intended such effects. Twang 08:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't 'A code word for left-wing politics, communism or socialism' sound a bit conspiratorial? --98.204.38.157 (talk) 16:09, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure it does, but the real missing definition would be something like 'next-generation liberal'.

Apparently 'progressive' is used by people who feel squeamish about calling themselves 'liberals' because the public might associate that with the right's besmirchment of the term.

Or it could be that progressives are liberals who don't want to deal with matters they think are well over and done with (let's say, Food safety [cf. XX-c. Chicago slaughterhouse brouhaha vs. XXI-c. Chinese melamine milk scandal] ; lead paint in children's toys [cf. America's failure to ban lead paint for 76 years after the League of Nations did vs. XXI-c. Chinese toy scandal]) [as though capitalism had permanently reformed in the areas that it had a finger shaken at] and just want to deal with trendy issues they can impose on the general public.

But I think there must be something else. I don't know. That's what I came to Wikipedia to find out. 4.154.253.50 (talk) 16:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Taxonomic 'progressive trait'
In biological taxonomy, a "progressive" trait is a phenotype which is divergent to (e.g. makes progress away from and toward) the over-all group but is a distinguishing feature of its subgroup. Meaning what the specific taxon has is unique to identifying it as against its larger group's common characteristics. i.e. Traits not shared by their common ancestor.

This is usually considered progressive "evolutionarily", and therefore pertinent to what makes it excel in being unique and qualifies as different from its wider range of disparate cousins while defining of its own particular type's "progress" away from similar types.

It can also be called "kainoteny" from the Greek "Kainos" meaning 'newness' as a novel quality, something uniquely individual and without parallel or example. Rather than the Greek "neos", from which we get "neoteny", meaning newness also, but solely in consideration of quantity. Pre-defined in its quality, having previous examples: e.g. not unique and but just another instance, fresh in composition, only not novel insofar as it is redundant as against others of its same type. Simply new in its particular design alongside those of the same qualities. 216.227.108.60 (talk) 06:45, 27 August 2012 (UTC)