num_pages: 576
description: If you think the world is coming to an end think again: 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 nave 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 naturetribalism authoritarianism demonization magical thinkingwhich 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.
language: English
title: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
publisher: Viking