Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Steven Pinker assembles long-run data on life expectancy, child mortality, literacy, income, war, violence, and civil rights to argue that the human condition has improved by almost every measurable standard since the eighteenth century. He attributes those gains to the cluster of ideas he calls the Enlightenment, namely the use of reason, science, humanism, and a belief in progress, and traces how they took hold in politics, medicine, and economic life. Pinker engages with the most common objections, including inequality, climate change, the loneliness of modern life, and the risks of artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, and tries to weigh them against the broader trend lines. He also defends the Enlightenment project against critics on both the religious right and the postmodern left. The book is at once a statistical brief, a history of ideas, and an argument for keeping faith with the institutions that made modern progress possible.
Also by Steven Pinker
What you might want to know about Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Steven Pinker marshals data across dozens of measures to argue that human life has improved dramatically and that Enlightenment values are why.
Yes. Harari featured it in his curated Apple Books reading list, describing Pinker as one of the most important thinkers of our time and the book as a powerful defense of reason and progress in an age of pessimism.
Yes; Pinker devotes substantial sections to climate change, inequality, existential risk, and the philosophical critiques of the Enlightenment before laying out his own response.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress was written by Steven Pinker, published in 2018 by Viking.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is 556 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
