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

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/enlightenment-now-the-case-for-reason-science-humanism-and-progress/
- Published: 2018-02-25T11:27:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**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 75 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, Pinker makes the case for reason, science,
and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Reviews

“My new favorite book of all time.”
**—Bill Gates **

“An excellent book, lucidly written, timely, rich in data and eloquent in its championing
of a rational humanism that is — it turns out — really quite cool.”
— **New York
Times Book Review**