Enlightenment Now
The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Ratings38
Average rating4
15
The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Ratings38
Average rating4
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature -- tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking -- which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Reviews with the most likes.
Pinker proves himself to be a well articulated and brilliant thinker, it was refreshing to read a popular science book, written by an academic that didn't descend into self indulgent intellectual prose, content or vocabulary, in fact Pinker seems to oppose such behaviour as he critiques the hubristic intellectual elite (mainly in America) that act as experts but fail to explain their domains with lucidity. It felt like I'd met a kindred spirit, as I was reminded on the frustrating experience of going through university and having to read academic papers (from the sciences and humanities) that were written poorly and seemed to be self congratulatory on how complicated their subject matter was. Pinker does a good job in substantiating the perspective that the world has improved much more than people think, but it at times feels a little one sided as we are shown a slew of graphs and stats that only assist his argument. The last three chapters were my favourite. Pinkers commentary on the intellectual left and populist right are clear and insightful and he gives us reason to believe in the merit of ideas and values that materialised in the enlightenment. He also gives a refreshing perspective on opposing the trite romanticism that attempts to overthrow reason and constructive progress by appealing to emotion and calling on the ‘dire need' for the human spirit to over throw the shackles of modernity. I've definitely fallen prey to this way of thinking, attracted to the self righteous, artificial profundity bereft of originality which only really stirs the brewing shitpot of passionate, illogical opinion. That being said, Pinker is not some science-will-fix-all rationalist that curb stomps the arts, he celebrates painters, writers and celebrates the human spirit as a humanist. This is why I think he is a brilliant thinker, he can write well, provides a balanced argument and gives good reason to believe that our belief systems inherited from the enlightenment are (and continue to be) worth keeping.
This book should be mandatory in schools! There is so much need for enlightenment in our society. We need the positive mindset and determination that enlightened minds will conquer and that inevitably the weaker of spirit and pessimistic will simply wane and not be remembered.
One of the best books I have ever read. Very inspiring.
Pinker's grand tour to prove to all of us that our innate negative recency-bias is deceptive and that our world has indeed progressively been getting better and better and better. He shows and explains detailed stats for humanity metrics like life expectancy, wars, safety, knowledge, happiness and all curves are (and always have been) climbing upwards. The connections he ties, between countries turning into democracies, and them consequently showing improvements in all other aspects of life, are obvious yet good to see in numbers.
All the stats are impressive and convincing, even though they maybe could have used a little less detail in the end, as it starts to get repetitive. But his last section, three chapters on reason, science and humanity, is really inspiring again, where he tries to entangle why factions of society (religion, politics,..) sometimes try so hard to combat reason/science in its quest to improve humanity. And how politicising of any causes to improve our quality of life (or nature) is counterproductive in today's society.
Obviously this is a direct response to Trump's slogan of returning to better times, and he doesn't shy away from occasionally addressing his followers and claims head-on. But even though it's a lot US/elite-countries based (mainly because there's a limited amount of countries that have been collecting all these statistics over time) it does try to make a point to keep it global, which I appreciated.
