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

by Steven Pinker

Does the demonization of science in the liberal arts programs of higher education matter? It does, for a number of reasons. Though many talented students hurtle along pre-med or engineering tracks from the day they set foot on campus, many others are unsure of what they want to do with their lives and take their cues from their professors and advisors. What happens to those who are taught that science is just another narrative like religion and myth, that it lurches from revolution to revolution without making progress, and that it is a rationalization of racism, sexism, and genocide? I’ve seen the answer: some of them figure, “If that’s what science is, I might as well make money!” Four years later their brainpower is applied to thinking up algorithms that allow hedge funds to act on financial information a few milliseconds faster rather than to finding new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease or technologies for carbon capture and storage.