The follow-up to Pinker’s groundbreaking The Better Angels of Our Nature presents the big picture of human progress: 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.
##在英语写作上,Pinker是一流的。但在政治议题上,作为一个典型的globalist,他的观点天真,甚至愚蠢。Pinker对于“科学”有着近乎宗教般的虔诚,但是所谓科学,只是当前人类对于世界的理解,而这个理解是局限的,并不一定是绝对真理。历史已经反复证明了,前人的“科学”会不断地被后人的发现推翻。
评分##我以为是讲证悟,讲的是启蒙思想 ????
评分##我的求生欲真的挺强,刚对人类社会产生巨大失落感,马上开始高强度阅读Steven Pinker试图缓解局势,重新相信我们在发展进步、世界在变好……具体效果待定,可能要加大马力来激活我逐渐被掩埋的乐观主义。 不患寡而不均的思维方式不可取,用发展的角度解决环境问题,民主的代价与价值……还是忍不住联想到疫情,不知这一场天灾人祸之后,世界会如何改变。
评分##Somewhat repetitive, but the quality of writing makes up for it. Each chapter is a great writing sample.
评分##我以为是讲证悟,讲的是启蒙思想 ????
评分##astonished. 论文也可以这么好看有趣信息量巨大
评分##我以为是讲证悟,讲的是启蒙思想 ????
评分##Pinker论证科学带来的种种好处:更长的寿命,更少贫穷,更丰富的物质享受,更和平(主要指国家级战争更少),更多民主(主要更多国家选择民主政体),教育更普及(主要是文盲更少)。单子很长,世界确实有实实在在变化。可福柯的生命政治视阈下的现代人,也有类似的趋势。pinker提到福柯,为什么不认真论证,打倒福柯,证明“数世纪的科学知识发展以及其带来的好处,背后是没有站着个'权力'的”,呢?(这是疑问句,不是反问句)反而花了那么多精力去评判宗教生活(这种评判标准当然是上面科学带来的那些好处啦),还花那么大篇幅想论证尼采是自大狂和纳粹分子。关键对手都避开,然后复述那些老掉牙的偏见,难怪书那么长。
评分##Pinker 怒了
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