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

Steven Pinker

4.27 · Rating details · 1,682 Ratings · 306 Reviews

"My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates

"A terrific book...[Pinker] recounts the progress across a broad array of metrics, from health to wars, the environment to happiness, equal rights to quality of life." --The New York Times

The follow-up to Pinker's groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: people are living lon ...more

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Hardcover, 576 pages

Published February 13th 2018 by Viking

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Lists with This Book

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Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich

Science Published in Year: 2018

46 books — 10 voters

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The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

Historical Nonfiction 2018

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Jan 30, 2018 David Wineberg rated it liked it

You’ve never had it so good, and Steven Pinker has the stats and charts (over 70!) to prove it. Wars are fewer and less severe, homicides are down, racism is in decline, terrorism is a fading fad, democracy rules, communicable diseases and poverty are on their way out. Life expectancy is up, and police are killing fewer people, both black and white. Even the poor have refrigerators. Inequality is a requisite sign of success. So appreciate the wonderful state of affairs you find yourself in. This ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Gary rated it did not like it

When this book was not boring me it was irritating me.

All of the author’s anecdotes I had read elsewhere. Science is good. I don’t need convincing. Vaccines work. Poverty is bad and is getting better throughout the world. Everyone who wants to know this stuff already knows it.

Why equate Al Gore with Theodore Kaczynski (The Unabomber) as the author seems to do regarding the environment? Is Fox News really right when they said the poor can’t be poor because they have cell phones and air condition When this book was not boring me it was irritating me.

All of the author’s anecdotes I had read elsewhere. Science is good. I don’t need convincing. Vaccines work. Poverty is bad and is getting better throughout the world. Everyone who wants to know this stuff already knows it.

Why equate Al Gore with Theodore Kaczynski (The Unabomber) as the author seems to do regarding the environment? Is Fox News really right when they said the poor can’t be poor because they have cell phones and air conditioning today? The author defended that absurdity though he doesn’t mention that Fox used to argue that when Obama was president.

And why did the author make a false equivalence between Bernie Sanders and Trump? Sanders didn’t believe ‘climate change is a Chinese Hoax’, or pick someone in his cabinet who thinks vaccines cause autism, or wanted to build a wall and claim Mexico will pay for it, or feed our hate against Muslims, Browns, Asians or anyone who strikes his fancy for the day even kneeling football players.

This author always seemed to have some pie in the sky anti-humanist post-modernist Strawman he was easily demolishing for some reason I couldn’t figure out. He mentioned the in-gratitude were in the 9th circle of hell and implied Dante had a point and people most of us have never heard of such as Heidegger, Adorno, and Neitzsche, and I think he also mentioned Marcuse belonged there for their in-gratitude. (I’m going to venture a guess, since I didn’t read all of the book: the author doesn’t like ‘identity politics’ and gets bothered by ‘political correctness’ and thinks ‘both sides’ are to blame. I don’t know if that’s where he was going, but I wasn’t going to find out by wading thru a familiar story I’ve read better told in other books).

The author is completely out of his depth on economics and inequality. I suggest you read Piketty’s book instead of this author’s poorly constructed deconstruction of Piketty’s wonderful book, and then tell me again why inequality is not real or not a big deal! His Enlightenment and Romanticism knowledge seemed superficial. Of the 8 or so Voltaire quips he provided, I had heard them all elsewhere.

I stopped this book after 5 hours. I got my credit back from Audible. I seldom do that. This author was teaching me nothing I didn’t already know, and worse than that seemed to have a disregard for the truth by trying to defend his own thesis beyond what the facts would take a reasonable person. ...more

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Mar 13, 2018 Trevor rated it did not like it

Shelves: not-to-read

Why I won't be reading this:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...

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Jul 24, 2017 Jillian Doherty rated it it was amazing

Ever since Bill Gates tweeted his endorsement for Pinker's Better Angels, fans have rushed to support his writing of big ideas by big thinkers!

Enlightenment Now illustrates Pinker's practical yet tangible style, but is freshly positive as well. His explosive understanding toward social science and political empathy will appeal to all big thinkers and affirmative readers alike.

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Mar 04, 2018 Atila Iamarino rated it it was amazing

Tudo o que esperava e um pouco mais. O livro é uma continuação do Os Anjos Bons da Nossa Natureza: Por Que a Violência Diminuiu, onde o Pinker escreve porque a humanidade está progredindo em quase todos os sentidos, apesar de termos a impressão do contrário.

Para alguém como eu, que não tem a menor bagagem filosófica, esta obra foi excelente. Pinker explica muito bem o que foi o Iluminismo (na interpretação dele) e porque o humanismo foi tão importante para mudarmos conceitos éticos, políticos e ...more

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Feb 16, 2018 Charles rated it liked it

As with Steven Pinker’s earlier "The Better Angels of Our Nature," of which this is really an expansion and elucidation, I was frustrated by this book. On the one hand, Pinker is an able thinker and clear writer, free of much of the ideological cant and distortions of vision that today accompany most writing about society (for society is what this book is about), and he is mostly not afraid to follow his reasoning to its conclusions. His data on human progress is voluminous, persuasive, and extr ...more

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Mar 25, 2018 Ross Blocher rated it it was amazing

Everyone should read Enlightenment Now. It seems odd to require a defense of reason, science, humanism and progress, but we suffer if we do not understand how far humanity has come by application of these principles. Steven Pinker has done us the favor of chronicling that progress, with data, in a compellingly written volume that challenges common assumptions. The news cycle and many prominent intellectuals would have us think that the world is becoming a darker, scarier place; yet the opposite Everyone should read Enlightenment Now. It seems odd to require a defense of reason, science, humanism and progress, but we suffer if we do not understand how far humanity has come by application of these principles. Steven Pinker has done us the favor of chronicling that progress, with data, in a compellingly written volume that challenges common assumptions. The news cycle and many prominent intellectuals would have us think that the world is becoming a darker, scarier place; yet the opposite is true. While pessimism makes for good news coverage and stokes political fires, denying progress causes us to mistrust the systems we've put in place. Combine that mistrust with a lack of understanding of WHY we put those systems in place, and you get setbacks like a Trump presidency, a burgeoning flat earther movement, and anti-vaccine advocacy. Acknowledging humanity's successes is not foolishly optimistic or defeatist; rather, it should inspire us to work toward an even better future, because we know our efforts will not be in vain. This is not a Panglossian "best of all possible worlds"; rather, it is ackowledgement that we live in the best world... SO FAR. A quote from Barack Obama summarizes this view: "If you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be - you didn't know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family or a poor family, what country you'd be born in, whether you were going to be a man or a woman - if you had to choose blindly what moment you'd want to be born, you'd choose now."

This account of progress plays out on a variety of quantifiable measures, and it's not just good news for denizens of first world countries. Pinker is careful to tease apart the trends that typically begin in developed countries and then spread globally. Average life expectancy worldwide was stalled at 30 years until the late 1800s, but has now skyrocketed to 71. Child mortality has plummeted. "For an American woman, being pregnant a century ago was almost as dangerous as having breast cancer today." Infectious diseases are being driven to extinction (and many already have). Caloric intake has increased across the world, even as population continues to grow, to the point that in many countries the poorest people are over-fed rather than under-fed. Undernourishment is fast becoming a thing of the past, and famines are now incredibly rare and lack the destructive potential of their predecessors even a century ago. All people are becoming, on average, wealthier (wealth inequality is a separate topic that is also addressed, but the trend is still positive across the world), and have more disposable income and opportunities to learn and travel. Literacy has grown, and with it IQ. Work hours have decreased, and child labor is in steep decline. Violence and death are down across almost every single measure (as Pinker detailed in another book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and expands on here). Representative government has spread to a majority of the world's countries and individuals. These improvements, surprisingly, also play out in sustainability (a chapter in particular that challenged many of my assumptions), energy use, pollution, and population growth. Pinker is no Pollyana: he does carefully address some of our most pressing problems, namely climate change and the threat of nuclear war. Even for these serious quandaries, he provides cause for optimism and some potential answers.

All these charts and trends have ragged trajectories that dip and rise along their paths. None of these improvements come all-at-once or unceasingly. As Pinker says, that would be magic... and science isn't magic. There are reasons for these improvements - and those reasons can be applied to solving new problems. Pinker also unpacks the importance of appealing to reason, the power of scientific thinking, and a basis for secular morality that transcends religious identity. He identifies and argues against the worldviews that oppose the ideals of the Enlightenment. This is a long book, but it is important, timely, and a delight to read. ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 Alex MacMillan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

In his newest book, (Neoliberalism) Now: The Case for (Positivism), Scien(tism), (Atheism), and (Globalization), Steven Pinker seeks to cash in on the Trump election by rushing out what is mostly a rehash of material from his previous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. His method of reasoning and tone of argument seeks to preach to the choir rather than persuade the unaffiliated. Unlike his classic works, The Blank Slate and The Sense of Style, this book will not be something we return to de ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Peter Mcloughlin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 00000good-things, 1990-to-present, american-history, biology, african-history, asian-history, classical-world, complexity, economics, european-history

I really enjoy Pinker's books. I think I have read all of them. I enjoyed this one as well despite some of my political differences with Pinker. I laud his hailing of the enlightenment. I am with him this maligned movement should get more respect than it does. I am a big believer in modernity. I agree science and reason even when done by flawed bipeds like ourselves is the best guide in our mental toolbox. Pinker recognizes that our modern politics is tribal and this clouds our judgment turning ...more

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Jan 30, 2018 Mark rated it it was amazing

As in The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker shows us why we have to look beyond the news cycle and our own biases to examine the forces that have continuously improved conditions for the bulk of humanity. And Pinker provides the data to back his arguments up. There's no doubt that Pinker will be accused of being a Pollyanna, but he acknowledges that mankind has hard work ahead - including dealing with global climate change. His argument is simply that if we stand a chance at confronting ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Richard marked it as to-read-2nd

Pinker’s latest is getting a lot of press, of course.

Here are a few links:

His own synopsis at the Wall Street Journal: The Enlightenment Is Working (paywall; try Googling wsj The Enlightenment Is Working and clicking through from Google, maybe into “private browsing mode”. Works sometimes.)

Ezra Klein of Vox is a pretty good interviewer, and he hooked up with Pinker at his podcast. I really liked that they both name-dropped Dan Kahan's work at his Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School ...more

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Mar 30, 2018 Krista rated it liked it

Shelves: 2018, nonfiction

What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable. In fact, it’s one of the easier questions to answer. Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than ill

...more

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Mar 24, 2018 Miles rated it it was amazing

Steven Pinker was one of the first writers to kindle my passion for scientific thinking. When I read The Blank Slate in 2011, it exposed me to a host of intellectual disciplines that my undergraduate training in philosophy had neglected––most notably evolutionary psychology, skepticism, and the empirical foundations of human nature. Nearly a decade later, I am thrilled not only to have another opportunity to journey through Pinker’s impressive mind, but also that his chosen message is rooted i ...more

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Feb 13, 2018 Gary Moreau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is a magnificent book written by a brilliant author who happens to be one of the world’s foremost experts on language and the mind. (Yes, he’s a psycholinguist.)

Thankfully, I fully agree with 99% of everything he says. The case for humanism and for progress has never been stronger and he makes that case clearly and strongly. The problem with reality, however, is that it always exists in context, so when it comes to graphs and statistics, there’s a lot of wiggle room if you have the time an This is a magnificent book written by a brilliant author who happens to be one of the world’s foremost experts on language and the mind. (Yes, he’s a psycholinguist.)

Thankfully, I fully agree with 99% of everything he says. The case for humanism and for progress has never been stronger and he makes that case clearly and strongly. The problem with reality, however, is that it always exists in context, so when it comes to graphs and statistics, there’s a lot of wiggle room if you have the time and the research staff. Having said that, I nonetheless believe that this is a very disciplined and sincere attempt to tell an accurate and complete story.

If there is a but for me it is the fact that Enlightenment reason is often interpreted to be deductive reason. It is the reason behind the scientific method that moves from left to right conceptually – the logic behind cause and effect. It is the gift of the Enlightenment and, as Pinker notes, is so far ahead of our prior knowledge that it is almost ridiculous to compare. But—and it’s a but he accepts—it’s not infallible.

Said differently, science is often more about probabilities than truths. Initial scientific conclusions are often wrong, although “wrong” is the wrong word. Technology and science don’t determine truth so much as they reveal the truth that has always been there. Which is why it sometimes takes a few attempts and no one should ever wish to turn back the clock of technology. It won’t happen and we shouldn’t want it to.

One of the unintended consequences of the Enlightenment focus on deduction, however, is that we tend to see the world in binary terms of either/or. We tend to see the only alternative to humanism or liberal democracy, in other words, to be authoritarianism, or, as Pinker puts it, “a strong leader who wrenches the country backward to make it ‘great again’.”

The implication, I think, is that liberalism must be built on individualism. And I’m not convinced it has to be. Why can’t liberalism exist for the collective good? Are not the purpose of power and the structure of power two different things?

Pinker uses Adam Smith’s famous example of the pin maker, as an example, to echo Smith’s individualistic sentiment that in a free market “each gets back something that is more valuable to him than what he gives up.” And for much of the post-Enlightenment era that truth has held.

It is, however, predicated on the ideal of “efficient" markets and “fully informed” consumers and labor. And do those really exist in our current technologically connected world? Is the single mother working for minimum wage really getting back more than she gives up when we consider that in modern society we have made money not just a luxury flowing from the division of labor but a necessity for bare survival? To put it in Pinker’s own terms of progress, the destitute poor today are arguably worse off—relatively speaking—than the destitute poor during Smith’s time. Yes, they lived hard lives back then, but, as Pinker would point out, nobody lived very long, health and safety standards were low for everyone, and there was little in the way of meaningful convenience that even money could buy. And where will the single mother’s kids be without access to good education and technology – both of which now cost money?

Early in the book, in the chapter aptly named “Progressophobia,” Pinker notes, “Seeing how journalistic habits and cognitive biases bring out the worst in each other, how can we soundly appraise the state of the world? The answer is to count.” At one level, it’s spot on. At another level, however, a count is one-dimensional. (It’s binary) In my experience, however, reality is full of dualities. My count is someone else’s ‘don’t have.’ He notes this himself. The denial of duality is a simple strategy for winning an argument but doesn’t always do the subject justice.

Which brings me to my last point. And I suppose it’s another version of the binary challenge. Pinker notes, for example, “Intellectuals hate progress. Intellectuals who call themselves ‘progressive’ really hate progress. It’s not that they hate the fruits of progress … It’s the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class …” I won’t take it personally because he doesn’t know me from a bag of elbows. Hate is an awfully binary word, however.

A truly great book. Perhaps book of the year. You need to read it. ...more

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Mar 16, 2018 Ericka Clouther rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, author-male, science, philosophy, history, religion, psychology, politics, humanism, 2018

I read this because Bill Gates said we should all read it (here's his review: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enli...). I thought this book was pretty interesting and engaging even if at times I found it unpersuasive. The concept is basically that things have gotten better throughout history (I believe this) and that they will continue to get better. Furthermore, a belief that they will get better is inspirational to people to make it so, whereas a belief that everything is on the decline is di ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Owlseyes marked it as to-read

Shelves: optimism-in-his-mind, pink-minded, rosier-mind, data-gospel-gaps

DELUSION
A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary. (From Wiki)

Koreas united now!!
No more mass-shootings now!!
Forever young now!!!
Fair elections in Russia now!!
A free Tibet now!!
Etc, all you need is to say it....now.
And then things look as if they are, as it's said; but in fact...

https://quartzy.qz.com/1204932/steven...

http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by...

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Feb 25, 2018 Edward Sudall rated it it was ok

There are more slaves than there ever has been therefore the world is worse than it ever has been. That is my parodic example of oversimple and overgeneral Pinker-logic.

Wasn't it Albert Einstein that once said "not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Actually, it was the Sociologist William Bruce Cameron. (But Einstein's celebrity authority, is like Pinker's: if he says it, it becomes more believed). The full quote is:
"It would be nice if all of ...more

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Mar 01, 2018 Edouard Stenger rated it did not like it

Enlightenment Now is Steven Pinker’s latest book. Pinker was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and his books are regularly featured in the best-selling lists.

While the purpose of this book is commendable – to show with extensive use of data that we are living in the best of times – two reasons made me cringe while reading it. Firstly, the author completely misses the mark on the topic I have dedicated part of my professional life for the past 10+ year ...more

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Jan 29, 2018 Sanford Chee marked it as to-read

Bill Gates's endorsement:
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enli...

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Mar 05, 2018 Michael Austin rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2018

Steven Pinker is a rare creature in the academic world: a liberal who is not a leftist. As a liberal he supports things like free speech, civil rights, democratic ideals, and a strong government that ensures safety, protects the environment, and redistributes some portion of income to support education, health care, infrastructure, and the reduction of poverty. As a non-leftist, he supports things like a democratic government and a capitalist economy that, while subject to government regulation ...more

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Feb 17, 2018 Ryan Boissonneault rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Francis Bacon once said that “some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” This is one of the few.

The main thesis of the book is that the enlightenment values of reason, science, and humanism have led to scientific and moral progress and that the embrace of these values will continue the trend. This, as opposed to counter-enlightenment values (religious faith, nationalism, tribalism, relativism, declinism), is the recipe for the maximizati ...more

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Mar 24, 2018 Omar Ali rated it really liked it

I have not so much read the book as scanned it. For most of the book he builds a case for his basic claim that life, for most people, has improved to an amazing extent in the last 200 years and we can thank science, reason and humanism for all this progress.
I assume he has to provide so much data because he knows this is an unfashionable opinion within the postmodern liberal intellectual elite and this bothers him. By listing all these facts and showing us all these graphs, he thinks he can con I have not so much read the book as scanned it. For most of the book he builds a case for his basic claim that life, for most people, has improved to an amazing extent in the last 200 years and we can thank science, reason and humanism for all this progress.
I assume he has to provide so much data because he knows this is an unfashionable opinion within the postmodern liberal intellectual elite and this bothers him. By listing all these facts and showing us all these graphs, he thinks he can convince even his most skeptical critics that progress is real, and that it is much more widely distributed than most people imagine. Is there something missing from his account of progress? I think there definitely is. I do not disagree with his claim that progress is real. Hunger, disease, violent death, these are not trivial concerns. The tremendous progress in these areas is real, and it is meaningful. Intellectuals who criticize Pinker by pointing to persistent or new forms of ill health, physical suffering or violence should take a break and actually read the book, they will find that he has the data and it is not bad data. Either argue about his data with better data of your own, or argue on some OTHER grounds. On THESE grounds, he is solid.
But human beings are not just machines for eating and reproducing. Our lives need meaning and just as we are programmed to seek food, sex and shelter, we are also programmed to seek social status and other satisfactions that are not necessarily better delivered to more people today than were delivered to them in older iterations of human society. That many of his critics are wrong about the data, or are straw-manning about science and reason, does not mean all of them are wrong about everything. Yes, Pinker has a powerful point, whatever else you think is important, you cannot deny that food, health and shelter are critically important.. and that they were not delivered by pre-modern societies anywhere close to the levels at which they are delivered to astoundingly large numbers of human beings by modern society. But this still leaves a lot of room for argument about other things (meaning, community, hope, love, family, friendship, power, hate, happiness, the list is endless), argue about those; but if your case is based on some romantic notion of idyllic peasant utopias of the past, then this book should set you right.
So far, so good.
Then you come to the last chapter and Pinker tries his hand at explaining humanism and its philosophical enemies, and boy oh boy, is he bad at it. I agree with him on at least 2 parts of his basic thesis (reason and science have tremendously increased human well being, in ways that most human beings care about very deeply indeed, though not in all ways) and would love to agree with him on humanism too, but cannot. Anyway, that is another story. But even I felt like cutting back to 3 stars or less when I got to his mangling of Nietzsche. My serious suggestion is that you skip the last chapter. You will not lose anything and you may appreciate a lot of the facts in the rest of the book with less prejudice.
Worth a read, especially if you have not read "The better angels of our nature".. if you have, you can probably skip this one. It is just a more detailed and wider-ranging version of the same book. ...more

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Mar 18, 2018 Michael Payton rated it it was amazing

I originally picked up this book after reading the critical reviews by among others, John Gray.
Most of the criticism leveled at Pinker in this book is centered around an alleged 'ahistoricism'. Pinker, so the claim goes, has profoundly misunderstood Hume, Kant and Mill; seeing them as advocates of a type of perfect rationality. While it's true that this is how the Enlightenment thinkers viewed rationality, it's also how Pinker views rationality.
Pinker's case is that the Enlightenment worked. W I originally picked up this book after reading the critical reviews by among others, John Gray.
Most of the criticism leveled at Pinker in this book is centered around an alleged 'ahistoricism'. Pinker, so the claim goes, has profoundly misunderstood Hume, Kant and Mill; seeing them as advocates of a type of perfect rationality. While it's true that this is how the Enlightenment thinkers viewed rationality, it's also how Pinker views rationality.
Pinker's case is that the Enlightenment worked. We now live in better times than we have ever seen in human history, on every measurable case and this success is a result core enlightenment principles.
Given that we live in the age of school shootings, police violence, ISIS, Trump and cancer epidemics, this claim appears to most people as something between vulgar and ridiculous. If you believe that is the case, I think this book is the perfect antidote. With careful data analysis and comprehensive statistics, Pinker shows that the world as it is now is a remarkable success.
What his critics have missed, and I'm not sure how they could have... Is that Pinker also makes the case that these successes are extremely fragile. They depend on historically contingent institutions that can be undermined by appeals to populism, threats of danger or the belief that the world is so fundamentally flawed that it has to be destroyed and created again from scratch. He also forcefully argues on the basis of psychology that we are particularly susceptible to the appeal of these kinds of ideas. We exaggerate the likelihood that we die of a terrorist attack, be we underestimate the likelihood of dying of something more familiar and every day, like car accidents or food poisoning.
The timing of this book is important too. Populism and anti-liberalism is on the rise on both the left and the right. Trump is, if nothing else, an anti-enlightenment politician. That's why we need a sound and well-articulated defense of these ideas. A critical moment in the book comes in the first chapter, where in quoting Fredrick Hayek, Pinker reminds us that even true ideas, good ideas, become stale if they are not argued for in new and interesting ways. Ideas need to be kept alive through new examples and vivid examples that are relevant to our world and our contemporary problems. I think Pinker has made a vivid case for these ideas in 'Enlightenment Now' and it should be taken seriously as a rebuttal to authoritarian populism and anti-liberalism. ...more

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Apr 12, 2018 11811 (Eleven) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Recommended to everyone who knows how to read.

There was a counter argument in the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago. It's worth reading if you have a subscription -

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dark...

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Mar 12, 2018 Jonathan Yu rated it it was amazing

I see a lot of hostile commentary on this book. My opinion is that they didn’t read it as they hash the same issues that the author addresses.

This book is flawed. It’s sorta long and it lags at the end but I still say it’s 5 stars because of the mindset it instills in you. They want you to sit down and solve problems - not wait for things on faith and not always be wanting to tear the structure down. The structure is working and the doomsday doomers (which I find myself gravitating too at times ...more

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Mar 12, 2018 Abigail Lauren rated it it was amazing

An incredibly ‘enlightening’ (excuse the pun) book, and one of the most motivational I’ve come across. It has left me with a powerful message of what it is possible to achieve through science, cooperation, policy, and sheer willpower.
Enlightenment Now is filled with wonderful (and of course fully cited) facts to boot. You’ll come away with plenty of interesting ‘did you know....?’ facts to crack out at the pub!

My not-so-brief summary of the book is below;

1. ENLIGHTENMENT

The key premise of the ...more

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Mar 30, 2018 Brian Cloutier rated it really liked it

Sapiens was pitched to me as a hook about all of history. That seemed a bit lofty and the book predictably fell a bit flat. What annoyed me most was that it often failed to defend the positions it espoused. Why should we stop eating meat? Because that is the morally better choice. Why? Just think of the animals!

My experience with Enlightenment Now was completely the opposite. I expected a book full of line graphs explaining how the world has gotten better along various metrics. I found it, but t Sapiens was pitched to me as a hook about all of history. That seemed a bit lofty and the book predictably fell a bit flat. What annoyed me most was that it often failed to defend the positions it espoused. Why should we stop eating meat? Because that is the morally better choice. Why? Just think of the animals!

My experience with Enlightenment Now was completely the opposite. I expected a book full of line graphs explaining how the world has gotten better along various metrics. I found it, but those line graphs came alongside an insane amount of depth, and a thorough defense of many beliefs I didn't realize I had. There's just a ton here. Here are some of the words I learned while reading this book: disinter, bucolic, favela, alief, anomie, bruit, dromedary, suasion, encyclical, penury, ombudsman, perfervid, polemicist, pervid, paroxysm, inerrant, sybaritic, colloquy, consilience, entente, clerisy. There are more but you're probably getting bored.

He's likely to make quite a few people angry. He does not hedge his language with any niceties while discussing Mao, Marxists in general, the anti-GMO crowd, religion, IQ-deniers, and quite a few groups. Nietzche's writings on the Ubermensch, for example, are "genocidal ravings".

I've always been a bit uneasy with religion and unable to explain why I don't like it, now I can. I've sometimes been a bit questioning about my love for science; it can be used for such horrible ends! Now I have a much better way of thinking about that problem. In some places he ranks ideals. Inequality isn't ideal but there's no fundamental reason why we should all be equal. Poverty, however, is an evil which should be eradicated, and steadily has been for a few decades now! Sustainability is also overrated, we've never really been sustainable, and usually switch to a new resource well before exhausting the last one. Let's focus on how future earths might hurt future humans, that's much easier to make a moral case for than worrying about the rate at which we're using rare earth metals.

The book isn't uniformly amazing; I think he's too quick to ignore the risk of AI and too dismissive of the urgency of global warming. In general, we may now have fewer problems but we're more interconnected and the potential damage black swans could cause keeps increasing. Outside of nuclear exchange he doesn't really address this possibility. The book is lengthened by a lot of rebuttals to anticipated counterarguments I would have never thought of. I can't really blame him, I've seen other reviews of this book make those counterarguments anyway, but it does make the book a fair amount harder to read.

He's pretty damn optimistic about our future, and it'd be hard to read this book without picking up a little of that optimism.

Problems are solvable. That does not mean that they will solve themselves, but it does mean that we can solve them if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology. [155]

I'll end the same way he does:

Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too. [452]

...more

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Mar 08, 2018 Nilesh rated it really liked it

Shelves: good-non-fiction

Enlightenment is a book in two parts. One, which is nearly the first 90% of the book, is the less interesting, less important, but the most impactful is the one that had to be written, while the other - the last 10% on Humanism - is the one that has to be read! The two have tenuous connections, despite the author’s best efforts. Overall, the book contains much that is obvious and some unbearably blue-sky, but for its balanced tone, nuggets of information all through, the section on humanism in t Enlightenment is a book in two parts. One, which is nearly the first 90% of the book, is the less interesting, less important, but the most impactful is the one that had to be written, while the other - the last 10% on Humanism - is the one that has to be read! The two have tenuous connections, despite the author’s best efforts. Overall, the book contains much that is obvious and some unbearably blue-sky, but for its balanced tone, nuggets of information all through, the section on humanism in the end and most importantly, the sheer positivity, it is a worthwhile read.

The author starts with an important point: our daily news is all about whatever that does not work. The din of such reports feeds a widespread paranoia of humanity heading towards one or the other disaster. The book lists dozens of all-important aspects of life quality where there is nothing but relentless improvement in the last few decades or centuries. Data of all kind is blasted at the reader to brush aside any possibilities of counterarguments. In the process, points mentioned are more often than not extremely obvious, although the author does take a strong positive stand on certain controversial aspects too. These sections also include some good theories and arguments, albeit in the author’s consistent, factual style rather than many other popular book writers. For example, Nasim Taleb would make tall claims about the concept of “ergodicity”, something he feels he has invented, to refute that income inequality is a rising problem. Mr Pinker, pronounced as someone Mr Taleb cannot stand, would arrive at the same conclusions on inequality not being a problem with four powerful points but none with any fancy titles. One of the four, which is apparently used by many academics for decades, is ergodicity in all but name.

While the author is reasonably balanced most of the times while countering the dissenting theories, he allows himself to be blindsided by his pre-decided favourable opinions about the progress as well. For example, the author makes valid points on how past doomsday forecasts of “peak stuff” have never been proven true. Yet, he is far too rational to really take that as any evidence of somehow this will never happen in future as well. For someone who knows that progress is not preordained, it should not be difficult to appreciate the value of fears. More often than not, we have conquered many diseases, disasters, wars and other societal issues simply by imagining their nightmare unfolding, leading to few from somewhere in the system arriving at the best solutions. As the author said, it is the higher vigilance - in response to the fears of terrorism-related events or crimes - that has led to a sharp reduction in crime. Yes, inequality may not be as bad as some believe, or pollution might be curable, but none of these problems is going to be sorted if everyone decides to simply count the positives.

Despite some great data, and a chest-thumping positive assessment of humanity’s progress - topics that are making the book wildly famous - the book’s best sections are towards the end on the philosophy of humanism. Philosophers and intellectuals have historically fallen into two traps: a. Over-philosophising metaphysically while completely missing the practical or ontological parts, thus needlessly complicating even the simplest of aspects of morality or ethics and b. Focusing too much on the perceived or real, generalised or specific ills without recognising the continuous progress humans make. The author’s call for the reason to rule, science to guide, our innate humanity to drive is powerful, even if simplistic. In fact, the naivety in the author’s optimism is both the book’s biggest strength and its biggest weakness. It allows the book to take a tack that makes the book unique and feel-good. But, it also makes the author sweep far too many real issues under the carpet in the most callous fashion. One such example is the way the threat posed by faster machines is handled in less than a few statements by simply announcing that they cannot have any purpose (which is even more galling given the book’s later sections on physicality of concepts like soul, mind or conscience)

In sum, a good book.
...more

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Mar 23, 2018 Mark Miano rated it it was amazing

For many reasons, this is the book that I needed to read at this point in my life.

You see, I'm a glass half-empty type of guy. I mean, really empty. I worry (and worry, and worry) about the state of our world, country, and society, the tribalism of our politics, the polluting of our skies and waters, and whether the future we're leaving for our kids is going to be better or a whole lot worse than the life I experienced.

Thankfully, on the glowing recommendation of Bill Gates (who writes a wonder For many reasons, this is the book that I needed to read at this point in my life.

You see, I'm a glass half-empty type of guy. I mean, really empty. I worry (and worry, and worry) about the state of our world, country, and society, the tribalism of our politics, the polluting of our skies and waters, and whether the future we're leaving for our kids is going to be better or a whole lot worse than the life I experienced.

Thankfully, on the glowing recommendation of Bill Gates (who writes a wonderful email about the books he's reading) I picked up ENLIGHTENMENT NOW: THE CASE FOR REASON, SCIENCE, HUMANISM, AND PROGRESS. This relentlessly optimistic book by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker is an antidote to every lurid, depressing news story, every case of political bickering, posturing, or tribalism, and even any stray thought that makes fellow glass-half-emptyers worry about the future. As Pinker demonstrates time and again, if you had to choose a time in human history that is the best moment to exist in, that moment is right now.

It may seem like an audacious claim, but Pinker backs up this statement with a comprehensive list of data - figures, charts, and graphs - to prove it. Life expectancy, child mortality, extreme poverty, global inequality, sustainability, pollution, deforestation, CO2 emissions, war deaths, genocide deaths, motor vehicle accidents, racist/sexist/homophobic opinions, literacy, leisure time, life satisfaction, even utilities, appliances and hours of housework. By every measure imaginable, and I counted 85 different figures in the book, the best moment to ever exist is this one.

The reason for this Pinker traces to the Enlightenment, which "is conveniently placed in the last two thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism of the first half of the 19th. Provoked by challenges to conventional wisdom from science and exploration, mindful of the bloodshed of recent wars of religion, and abetted by the easy movement of ideas and people, the thinkers of the Enlightenment sought a new understanding of the human condition. The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism, and progress."

As I've detailed above, the first 2/3rds of Pinker's book is spent deploying data to show how the human condition has improved over time, and especially since the Enlightenment. In most cases, the line of progress looks like a rocket ship taking off from earth, the improvements are so stark. The final 1/3rd is spent on analyzing how reason, science and humanism are the necessary companions to allow progress to happen.

While this book is optimistic, Pinker is also cautious that the progress made to date can be reversed by natural forces (entropy) and especially dark human forces - in particular, "religious, political, and cultural pessimists who insist that Western civilization is in terminal decline. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation."

Pinker has rightful disdain for those who make these assertions, whether from the far right (neocons, religious zealots, and Trumpists) or from the far left (social justice warriors and leftists/communists, especially in academia). For those on the fringes, this is not a book that will delight.

But if you're like me, a fairly middle of the road, glass-half-empty type of person, I highly recommend this book. And I close this review, with the close of the book, just so I never forget it:

"We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.
This heroic story is not just another myth. Myths are fictions, but this one is true - true to the best of our knowledge, which is the only truth we can have. We believe it because we have reasons to believe it. As we learn more, we can show which parts of the story continue to be true, and which ones false - as any of them might be, and any could become.
And the story belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity - to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in being. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance." ...more

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Feb 23, 2018 Dan Graser rated it it was amazing

There is no one alive who writes with the mind-sweeping clarity and breadth of knowledge that Steven Pinker possesses. Though there are other works of his that are perhaps more revolutionary (The Blank Slate) or ambitious in their singular explanatory power (How the Mind Works), it is this latest volume of his that is his most timely and all-encompassing cerebral broom.

If the idea of needing to defend Enlightenment values is mysterious to you at this point then I can only pity you your global-sc There is no one alive who writes with the mind-sweeping clarity and breadth of knowledge that Steven Pinker possesses. Though there are other works of his that are perhaps more revolutionary (The Blank Slate) or ambitious in their singular explanatory power (How the Mind Works), it is this latest volume of his that is his most timely and all-encompassing cerebral broom.

If the idea of needing to defend Enlightenment values is mysterious to you at this point then I can only pity you your global-scale ignorance or apathy. In Pinker, that cause of defense has found its most able champion. Offering an incredible array of 75 statistical graphs that are properly contextualized and interpreted, he has produced such an incredibly coherent and well-argued line of thinking that has enough independent and objective fact to annoy partisans of both sides of the political/philosophical spectrum.

Much of the work seems to follow-up on several of the arguments brought forth in his previous volume, "The Better Angels of Our Nature." Following a deft summary as to what Enlightenment ideals and practices are, Pinker proceeds to show just how they have benefited society and the world as a whole ever since, where they have come up short, and recommends several new usages of these ideas for future mutual benefit. Along the way he casts off so many misconceptions and anecdotal "arguments" against the Enlightenment, something long overdue in writings by contemporary intellectuals who - alarmingly and genuinely stupidly - have distanced themselves from these values. This is not done with flippant casuistry or mere rhetorical prolepsis but with relentless data and cogent, in-depth examination.

Some telling and amusing samples from the work include:
"If you extol reason, then what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers."
"While a vision of world peace may have given John and Yoko some good songs, it is hopelessly naïve in the real world."
"However long it takes, we must not let the existence of cognitive and emotional biases or the spasms of irrationality in the political arena discourage us from the Enlightenment ideal of relentlessly pursuing reason and truth."

This is the book of the year, no question. No one has this diverse array of knowledge, no one marshals their facts better, and no one does so with the ease of language that Dr. Pinker presents across a work of 500+ pages. In closing I will let him sum up one of the major points of this monumental achievement:
"Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too." ...more

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About Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

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Steven Arthur Pinker is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven b Steven Arthur Pinker is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of popular science. Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of seven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and most recently, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

He was born in Canada and graduated from Montreal's Dawson College in 1973. He received a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in 1976, and then went on to earn his doctorate in the same discipline at Harvard in 1979. He did research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a year, then became an assistant professor at Harvard and then Stanford University. From 1982 until 2003, Pinker taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and eventually became the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. (Except for a one-year sabbatical at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1995-6.) As of 2008, he is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard.

Pinker was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in 2005. He has also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Newcastle, Surrey, Tel Aviv, McGill, and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 1998 and in 2003. In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about the gender gap in mathematics and science angered much of the faculty. On May 13th 2006, Pinker received the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award for his contributions to public understanding of human evolution.

In 2007, he was invited on The Colbert Report and asked under pressure to sum up how the brain works in five words – Pinker answered "Brain cells fire in patterns."

Pinker was born into the English-speaking Jewish community of Montreal. He has said, "I was never religious in the theological sense... I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew." As a teenager, he says he considered himself an anarchist until he witnessed civil unrest following a police strike in 1969. His father, a trained lawyer, first worked as a traveling salesman, while his mother was first a home-maker then a guidance counselor and high-school vice-principal. He has two younger siblings. His brother is a policy analyst for the Canadian government. His sister, Susan Pinker, is a school psychologist and writer, author of The Sexual Paradox.

Pinker married Nancy Etcoff in 1980 and they divorced 1992; he married Ilavenil Subbiah in 1995 and they too divorced. His current wife is the novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein. He has no children.

He is currently working on an upcoming book about the evolution of human morality, specifically focusing on "the historical decline of violence and its psychological roots" as stated by the author himself on the Harvard website. ...more

More about Steven Pinker

Books by Steven Pinker

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature

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“One student asks: Why should I live?

Steven Pinker answers: In the very act of asking that question, you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you. And there are so many reasons to live! As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish. You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating. You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities. You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist. You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world. As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy—the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness—and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues. And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself. You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace. History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress.” — 7 likes

“(As Montesquieu wrote, “If triangles had a god they would give him three sides.”) For” — 3 likes

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