Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Steven Pinker

Thorndike Press, 2018 - Psychology - 835 pages

The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual 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 jaw-dropping 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.

With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - mbmackay - LibraryThing

I love reading Pinker - he is incredibly insightful and thought provoking. This book is something of a continuation of Better Angels, with the content broadened from violence to quality of life. As he ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - aadyer - LibraryThing

A thoughtful well constructed Defense of Enlightenment values in the modern era with multiple examples on why the future might be rosier than you might think. Varying from cognitive biases to public ...

Bibliographic information

• Title: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress; Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction Series
• Author: Steven Pinker
• Edition: large print
• Publisher: Thorndike Press, 2018
• ISBN: 1432853163, 9781432853167
• Length: 835 pages
• Subjects: Psychology / Social Psychology; Science / Philosophy & Social Aspects; Social Science / Violence in Society