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

Pinker, Steven

ISBN 10: 0525427570 / ISBN 13: 9780525427575

Published by Viking, 2018

About this Item

This book is in excellent condition. There may be minimal writing on the inside cover or cover page. Cover image on the book may vary from photo. Ships out quickly in a secure plastic mailer.

Seller Inventory # RDV.0525427570.VG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
• Publisher: Viking
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525427570
• ISBN 13: 9780525427575
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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

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 naïve 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 nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which 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.]

About the Author

Steven Pinker is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research, teaching, and books, he has been named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World Today and Foreign Policy's 100 Global Thinkers.