num_pages: 128
description: Progress. It is one of the animating concepts of the modern era. From the Enlightenment onwards the West has had an enduring belief that through the evolution of institutions innovations and ideas the human condition is improving. This process is supposedly accelerating as new technologies individual freedoms and the spread of global norms empower individuals and societies around the world. But is progress inevitable? Its critics argue that human civilization has become different not better over the last two and a half centuries. What is seen as a breakthrough or innovation in one period becomes a setback or limitation in another. In short progress is an ideology not a fact; a way of thinking about the world as opposed to a description of reality.In the seventeenth semi-annual Munk Debates which was held in Toronto on November 6 2015 pioneering cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and best-selling author Matt Ridley squared off against noted philosopher Alain de Botton and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell to debate whether humankinds best days lie ahead.
language: English
title: Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead?: The Munk Debates
publisher: House of Anansi Press