He seems frustrated that people show so little “gratitude” for the benefits that enlightenment has delivered them, and uses tales of disease, death and foul workplaces to convince us that now is the best time to be alive.Every horror of the past 200 years is put down to ignorance, irrationality or 'counter-enlightenment' trendsBut is gratitude ever what progress depended on?
--Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, … 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. “[Enlightenment Now] is magnificent, uplifting and makes you want to rush to your laptop and close your Twitter account.”—The Economist “If 2017 was a rough year for you, look no further than Steven Pinker’s engaging new book, Enlightenment Now, to cheer you up. The most stirring passages are those that reflect on what this means, on how unlikely progress is, rather than on its all-conquering logic.Unlike Kant and the other high priests of the Enlightenment, today’s rationalist somehow has to make do without God or unfolding historical logic.
This (as Nietzsche noted) makes science harder, not easier.
Is the world really falling apart? The penultimate page of the book implores us to “finally, drop the Nietzsche”, to which the simple answer is “don’t feed the troll, Steven”. Two thirds of the book, which is a kind of sequel to his bestselling Various foes are swatted away, for misreading the facts or using suspect moral reasoning. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. Adaptations and Essays. Instead, follow the data: In 75 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.
Steven Pinker’s answer to this problem is to double down on progress: the policies of the past 300 years are still the best available. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Ultimately, economic inequality “is not itself a dimension of human wellbeing”, he tells us, and that’s that. The heroic ethos of science, of progress, is to carry on regardless, even in the knowledge that entropy will eventually win. If it matters, we’ll solve it.Unlike his allies in the political sphere, he clearly isn’t troubled by the charge of elitism.
Martin Luther King Jr could have been grateful not to be living in 1850s Louisiana, but where would that have got him?
The big reveal at the end of the book is of the single thinker whose ideas capture, and perhaps even cause, everything that is wrong with today’s world: Friedrich Nietzsche.This is Pinker at his bluntest and least imaginative, suggesting that he has allowed American campus politics to get to him. Now is the best time to be alive claims this triumphalist defence of scientific rationality – if it matters, we’ll solve itSteven Pinker’s answer to this problem is to double down on progress: the policies of the past Pinker is up for a fight, and his main weapon is quantitative data. Enlightenment Now By Steven Pinker (PDF/READ) Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress By Steven Pinker INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR"My new favorite book of all time." With some deft intellectual moves, he manages to position “enlightenment” and “science” on the right side of every argument or conflict, while every horror of the past 200 years is put down to ignorance, irrationality or “counter-enlightenment” trends.Take nuclear weapons, which on the face of it would suggest potentially catastrophic consequences of scientific “progress”. He argues that “notwithstanding the habitual self-flagellation by Western intellectuals about Western racism, it’s non-Western countries that are the least tolerant”, without considering that maybe some self-flagellation is therefore good.The vice-like grip of Pinker’s reasoning derives from his curious relationship to intellectual history. The book is really a polemic, albeit one with a vast number of footnotes. Pinker does identify three scientific theories that have arisen since the 18th century, and which form an indispensable part of the scientific imagination: evolution, entropy and information. Scientists working on the first ever nuclear weapon only did so because they were each personally invested in beating Hitler, he informs us. Pinker would no doubt argue that reason is not a popularity contest, and yet this is scarcely the way to win the public round to the progressive cause.He is well aware that facts don’t settle political and ethical arguments, as much as he might like them to, and he reviews plenty of evidence to confirm this.
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