Which one is correct: Most big change or most big changes

I was watching A Conversation with Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates today, and when Barack Obama begins to talk, he says:

Most big change, most human progress, is driven by...

I am not a native English speaker, but I have a feeling that it should be most big changes instead of most big change.

Am I missing something here?

Solution 1:

This is to do with countable and uncountable nouns. This link will explain in more detail. In brief, countable things can be counted. Uncountable nouns are also called "mass nouns". Some nouns are countable ("I have three cats and one dog, I wish I had fewer cats"). Some nouns are uncountable ("I wiped some dust off the table" or "We made some progress"). Some nouns can be both ("I bought some coffee.", "Could you get me a coffee?").

The word "change" can be countable ("I made about a dozen changes to the document") or uncountable ("There was little change between drafts of the document"). In your original quote, it is uncountable, and reflects "progress" which is also uncountable.