Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Enlightenment Now marshals an impressive amount of evidence to support the claim that the enlightenment ideals of reason, science and humanism have led to considerable human progress and that the future of civilization hinges upon continuing this tradition. Pinker begins by explaining the Enlightenment and how it marked a turn away from dogmatism toward reason and humanism while at the same time giving birth to modern science and the notion of human progress. Importantly, Pinker does not argue for a return to all aspects of the European/North American Enlightenment of the 18th century, but to the ideas and tradition this engendered which has since been amplified by insights from scientists and scholars as diverse as Charles Darwin and Karl Popper. The bulk of the book is actually a evidence based case that human progress, beginning with the early modern Enlightenment, is real and ongoing. Skillfully weaving data with anecdotes which capture the imagination, Pinker has assembled such a wealth of objective grounding for the success of the Enlightenment project that all intellectuals who disagree with Pinker’s account will at least have to deal with the immense amount of data he has collected in support of his cause. The book concludes with a defense of reason, science and humanism against those who would critique it, whether from the perspective of behavioral economics, theistic religions or post-modernism. Here Pinker shows the ability to not only provide evidence in support of his ideas but also to understand his opponents ideas from the inside out. Again, future critics of the enlightenment will have to deal with Pinker’s ability to not only mix anecdote with real data but to undermine the rational basis of non-Enlightenment intellectual traditions. The only complaint I have with this book is that, ironically, it turns Enlightenment followers into something of a tribe. The Enlightenment is causing universal progress—no one who claims any regress in human society is correct. Thus, the opioid crisis is given a single page because it does not fit into the overall narrative. Similarly, critics of the Enlightenment are wrong on all points. There is nothing to be gained by reading post-modern or theistic critiques. The book might have been better titled Enlightenment Only instead of Enlightenment Now. Even if the book is polemical, it is a landmark in describing and marshaling evidence for a way of life that, as the author notes, is not free from attack. All serious debates as to the underlying bases of modern society will either have to agree with Pinker or provide data driven arguments to show he is wrong. Ironically, by relying on evidence based arguments, they will have to adopt an inheritance of the Enlightenment itself. A must read both for critics and proponents of the Enlightenment worldview that will surely be an essential text in that debate for years to come.