num_pages: 541
description: Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people and society as a whole more moralFrom Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King Jr. thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics economics and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy.In The Moral Arc  Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning rationality empiricism skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and indeed move us ever closer to a more just world.
language: English
title: The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People
publisher: Henry Holt and Co.