Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Rs. 2,490.00
Steven Pinker
- Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2018)
- THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Bristles with pure, crystalline intelligence, deep knowledge and human sympathy’ –Richard Dawkins
My new favourite book of all time — Bill Gates
Pinker is right. Not just a bit right, but completely, utterly, incontrovertibly right … for most people, life is better, even if they don’t realise it — Dominic Sandbrook ― Daily Mail
Brimming with surprising data and entertaining anecdotes … a genuinely enlightening book — Jan-Werner Müller ― Financial Times
In Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker extols the amazing achievements of modernity, and demonstrates that humankind has never been so peaceful, healthy and prosperous. There is of course much to argue about, but that’s what makes this book so interesting. — Yuval Noah Harari
Pinker is a paragon of exactly the kind of intellectual honesty and courage we need — David Brooks ― The New York Times
In his new book, Enlightenment Now, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker makes a more convincing case for the sciences benefiting the arts ― New Scientist
A characteristically fluent, decisive and data-rich demonstration of why, given the chance to live at any point in human history, only a stone-cold idiot would choose any time other than the present — Sam Leith ― Spectator
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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.
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.
About the Author
Book Specifications
Title: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Author: Steven Pinker
Language: English
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 556
Weight:
Published Year: 2018
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780141979090
Dimensions:
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