Is it? The quoted proposition is really two rolled into one: 1. Progress is inevitable. 2. Conditional on progress occurring at all, it has to take something

Is it? The quoted proposition is really two rolled into one: 1. Progress is inevitable. 2. Conditional on progress occurring at all, it has to take something reasonably close to a specific path. The first view seems to be quite widely held. I think it's false, but the second one is true. Is the version being critiqued here, the first one, second, or both?