History understood as a science has come under increasing criticism, as has the philosophical project which upheld that conception, namely the enlightened idea of progress. Presented here are 16 theses showing how the centrifugal trends tearing at the discipline can be overcome by embracing the epistemological advances of the natural sciences and developing a new rationalism and a new, non-teleological, idea of progress. The less individualistic and more humanistic intellectual and moral climate of the post-1989 world leads the author to have hope for a happy resolution of current paradigm paroxysms.