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Loading... Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (original 2018; edition 2018)by Steven Pinker (Author)
Work InformationEnlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker (2018)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) sanyamakadi | Apr 4, 2024 |   ) keplerhc | Jan 22, 2024 |  ) Jambyfool | Jan 10, 2024 | ) jbaty | Dec 29, 2023 | It will be a while before I can write an even-handed review on this one. (  ) therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
 Pinker wants the liberal arts to fit inside a STEM-shaped box, and he is happy to resize them with a chainsaw if need be. For Pinker, concepts like narrative and rhetoric wither before objectivity and reason. He emphasizes figures and facts without considering the framing that allows us to interpret them, or the significance of arguments that would challenge them. “Fashionable academic movements like postmodernism and critical theory,” he complains, “hold that reason, truth, and objectivity are social constructions that justify the privilege of dominant groups.” But Pinker does not seriously engage with any of the vast literature on postmodernism and critical theory, apparently assuming that his expertise in psychology and linguistics provides sufficient standing to insert himself into any and every academic conversation.  Sixteen years ago, in his book “Blank Slate,” he acknowledged that false conceptions about human nature in unequal societies make it “easy [for the rich] to blame the victim and tolerate inequality.” He allows that if “social status is relative,” then “extreme inequality can make people on the lower rungs of society feel defeated.” He sees real consequences.... But in “Enlightenment Now,” Pinker celebrates inequality as “a harbinger of opportunity.” Observing these differences in his work some 16 years apart, it seems that he has not become the champion of Enlightenment ideas in this respect, but rather has forgotten them without even noticing.  Enlightenment Now ... is a dogmatic book that offers an oversimplified, excessively optimistic vision of human history and a starkly technocratic prescription for the human future. It also gives readers the spectacle of a professor at one of the world’s great universities treating serious thinkers with populist contempt. The genre it most closely resembles, with its breezy style, bite-size chapters, and impressive visuals, is not 18th-century philosophie so much as a genre in which Pinker has had copious experience: the TED Talk AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Psychology.
Science.
Sociology.
Nonfiction.
HTML:INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." â??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. By the author of the new book, Rationality. 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 naĂŻve 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 natureâ??tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinkingâ??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 ou No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.44Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Social change Growth and developmentLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.06)
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