5
(1)

Enlightenmnt Now

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.
If you read one book this year, read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment NowPlease! More than any book I have read, this one exposes how the despair, nastiness, anger and masochism characteristic of today’s social-cultural-political climate is irrational, manufactured and simply based on incorrect information. ~Rex    

 

 

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

 

 

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


by Steven Pinker
 
Rex gives 4 1/2 hearts

The follow-up to Pinker’s groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: 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.

  Rex gives 4 1/2 hearts

 

 

 

Have you read this book? Please add a review or comment or question in the form at the bottom.  Thanks!

 

Loading

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 5 / 5. Vote count: 1

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

Follow me
Latest posts by Rex Alexander (see all)

Copyright © 2018-2024 REBTinfo – REBTraining All rights reserved.
This site is using the Desk Mess Mirrored Child Child-Theme, v2.2.4.1.1500210207, on top of
the Parent-Theme Desk Mess Mirrored, v2.5, from BuyNowShop.com