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

Pinker recalls a student asking him, “‘Why should I live?’” (2). He considers this the most “arresting” question he has ever been asked. Pinker pointed out that the student was seeking reasons to live and therefore was “committed to reason” (3) as an important part of her worldview. He told her that there are many reasons to live, including exploring one’s potential, appreciating and contributing to science and the arts, experiencing pleasure and the natural world, giving and receiving compassion, and helping further progress in the world.

In reflecting on his answer, Pinker recognized that he was championing “the ideals of the Enlightenment”—such as “reason, science, [and] humanism”—which he feels need defending, especially since we “take its gifts for granted” (4). He points to increased safety, fewer international conflicts, and improved medicine and hygiene as important advancements that the average person likely takes for granted. When people are unaware of how hard-won these human accomplishments were, they’re more likely to abandon the ideals that made them possible. Pinker laments that science, reason, and humanism constantly compete with “other strands of human nature” (5), such as tribalism, subservience to authority, scapegoating, and “magical” thinking. Pinker quotes Friedrich Hayek as saying that liberal ideals must be continually communicated in accessible, modern language so that each new generation can appreciate their value. He reiterates that this is what he hopes to accomplish in Enlightenment Now as he demonstrates the many successes Enlightenment thinking has prompted.

The author’s introduction provides insight into his world as a professor and his passion for Enlightenment values. By contrasting these values with other worldviews, such as insular tribalism and “deference to authority,” Pinker alludes to the threats of fascism and sectarianism based on ethnicity, religion, politics, or any other forms of “tribe.” He emphasizes that these perspectives can become more dominant if liberal societies can’t clearly articulate arguments against them. For example, the terrorist group ISIS conveyed a “terribly seductive” certainty about its worldview to persuade recruits. Pinker’s introduction highlights the connection between ignorance of history and the evolution of society, as well as the pessimistic outlook prevalent today. In doing so, he piques interest and shows why his work is relevant and necessary in today’s society.

Pinker titles his first chapter after philosopher Immanuel Kant’s motto for the Enlightenment, “Dare to Understand!” (7). Kant warned against the “dogmas and formulas” of government and religious institutions, arguing for further exploration into all subjects and for seizing the opportunity to make more progress. Pinker considers David Deutsch’s book The Beginning of Infinity a continuation of Kant’s argument, as it holds that every “‘evil is a problem that can be solved’” (7).

Pinker explains that the Enlightenment era began in the late 18th century and built on ideas of the Scientific Revolution and “Age of Reason” (7) of the 17th century. Using reason to solve problems and evaluate the world was the “foremost” ideal of the Enlightenment age, and its thinkers contrasted that ideal with religion, intuition, and authority. This prompted most Enlightenment philosophers to reject the notion of a humanlike God who could intervene in people’s lives, even though some of these thinkers weren’t atheists but deists or pantheists. Pinker refutes the idea that Enlightenment thinkers believed humans were totally rational beings, calling this a misinterpretation of their arguments for using reason.

Pinker credits David Wooten, a historian, with painting an accurate picture of the many superstitions that were ubiquitous among even the most educated members of 17th-century European society. These include belief in mythical creatures, justice rituals such as bleeding murder victims to determine who the murderer was, and interpreting natural events as signs from God or the devil. Pinker notes that the Enlightenment era helped people shed these superstitions and embrace reason as a new worldview. In addition, it helped develop the “science of man” (10), which evolved into the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology. These lines of inquiry helped Enlightenment thinkers establish humanism, which Pinker describes as “a secular foundation for morality” (10). This new approach to morals rejected religious worldviews that had fostered centuries of terrible violence, including the Inquisition, the Crusades, European religious wars, and the persecution of “witches.” Humanism emphasized the sentience of individuals rather than the desires of one ethnic, religious, or national group and challenged violent practices such as slavery and harsh punishments like torture and execution that were commonplace throughout Medieval Europe.

Pinker clarifies that Enlightenment’s progress differs from Romanticism, ideas about destiny, and 20th-century attempts by “technocrats and planners” to reorganize society via modern urban planning (11). The author derides these contributions as lacking in humanism and valuing order and architectural styles over human needs. The Enlightenment focused instead on improving societal institutions, especially governments, schools, and laws, for the benefit of everyone. For example, the Enlightenment prompted societies to stop implementing brutal punishments for all crimes and instead try to deter crime via varying levels of punishment depending on the severity of misdeeds. In addition, it helped societies encourage specialization and expand their economies by evaluating prosperity more logically. Pinker credits the Enlightenment for making peace possible. Kant urged practical solutions such as democratic governments, international laws against war, mediated negotiations, and freedom of movement to achieve peace. By explaining Enlightenment thinking contributed to changing European society and helped create the foundation for modern society, Pinker establishes the theme The Origins and Influence of Enlightenment Thinking.

Pinker concludes the chapter by explaining that he doesn’t mean to idolize Enlightenment thinkers in his work. He admits that many of them even practiced unethical behavior that modern society wouldn’t tolerate. Moreover, he notes, society has continued to progress since they made their arguments, and Pinker believes we can and should be critical of their perspectives. He introduces the subjects of his next chapter by noting that we understand more about entropy, evolution, and information than they did.

“Entro” is short for “entropy.” Pinker introduces the “Law of Entropy” to refer to the process of social order “dissipating.” He uses the analogy of building a sandcastle (and losing it to the natural elements) to illustrate that there are few ways to achieve order but many ways to experience disorder. He points to common phrases such as “Things fall apart” and “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong” (16) to demonstrate people’s acknowledgment of entropy in everyday life. These familiar sayings help make Pinker’s work accessible and less abstract, as anyone can recall experiencing entropy and responding with such a saying. Pinker argues that entropy is a major force in the universe and that humans have always tried to “deploy energy and knowledge to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order” (17).

Pinker explains that since the Big Bang, the universe’s energy has self-organized into systems—including the human body. He refers to the human ear as an example of many “improbable configurations” that make up people’s and other animals’ bodies. Before the Enlightenment advanced scientific thinking and evolutionary science, most people considered bodies “the handiwork of a divine designer” (18). We now understand that all organisms are “open systems” that use energy to maintain the order of their bodies, creating the by-products of waste and body heat. Because all living things must consume energy from their environment, Pinker calls natural systems a “war” that has prompted the evolutionary “arms race” of animals’ developing defenses such as spines, quills, claws, and poisons. This explains the evolution, or “evo,” part of the chapter’s title. By reiterating the creationist religious ideas popular before the Enlightenment era and contrasting them with evolutionary science, Pinker demonstrates how profoundly scientific inquiry can shift understanding and worldview.

Next, Pinker discusses “info,” or information, which, given its orderly nature, always results in a “reduction” of entropy, or disorder. Information requires patterns and therefore is inherently ordered. Pinker claims that some physicists consider information, like energy and matter, one of the “basic constituents of the universe” (20). As we evolve, we produce and store information in our DNA, and our bodies are inherently wired to process information during our lives. Hearing is one example: Our ears use electrical signals to perceive certain sounds and then change these to chemical signals so that our brains can process the information. Our brains have evolved to use neurons to process complex information and bring order to how we perceive the world, which enables us to make predictions and inferences that inform our behavior and helps us develop automatic, goal-directed responses, such as fleeing from predators, chasing prey, or even shivering when cold. We use these reactions as models for artificial intelligence in vehicles, robots, and other inventions. Because such information processing is instrumental in our thinking and therefore our behavior, Pinker argues, thoughts and ideas can literally change the world by influencing the structure of our brains. Human intelligence is the result of generations of evolution that “invested” in larger brains to process, store, and act on vast amounts of information; this is called the “cognitive niche” (22).

The cognitive niche includes establishing “mental models” of the world, cooperating with others, and developing language and culture. Our intelligence and penchant for information processing helped our species better exploit the environment for energy, which in turn fueled our brain’s development. Pinker points to the “Axial Age” of around 500 BCE, when many philosophical and spiritual traditions—such as Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism—began; he attributes these intellectual movements to people’s increased ability to capture and use energy, mostly because of agricultural advances. Agriculture helped civilizations afford priestly and academic classes of people because there was more than enough energy to go around. A similar boost in energy occurred during the Industrial Revolution, which provided a great “leap in human welfare” (23). By roughly charting societal development from hunter-gatherer groups to modern society, Pinker illuminates how civilizations use communication to develop academic and religious cultures. He refers to a Bertolt Brecht quote, “‘Grub first, then ethics’” (23), to emphasize that civilizations succeed by meeting their energy requirements and then exceeding them, at which point they can devote labor to more intellectual tasks.

Pinker reiterates that entropy, evolution, and information are important forces that “define the narrative of human progress” (23) and help us pursue a “better existence” out of the disorder and tragedy of the natural world. By using these concepts, we can understand the random nature of misfortune. Pinker credits the Scientific Revolution with helping dispel the idea that the universe is “saturated with purpose” or that “everything happens for a reason” (24). He claims that this worldview informed beliefs about gods and demons as well as cultural practices such as scapegoating minorities or blaming witches when unfortunate events occurred. Enlightenment thinkers presented an indifferent “clockwork universe” in which events can happen without any moral goal toward humans, and evolution added to this worldview by presenting nature as full of individual species that act on natural instinct, indifferent to human needs. Even poverty can result from random misfortune and entropy; wealth, however, requires explanation.

The author clarifies that acknowledging the random and arbitrary doesn’t mean that no “malevolence” exists; it’s present in the selfishness of our genes and natural selection, arguments and conflict (both individual and societal), and violence. He notes that, unfortunately, human evolution wired us for survival in “archaic societies,” which can complicate thriving in modern times, and that people are inherently superstitious, biased, and prone to demonizing enemies and endorsing violence as a form of justice.

Pinker finds hope in two facets of cognition: abstraction and recursive power. Abstraction allows us to imagine different causes, consequences, and concepts. Recursive thinking helps us create language and therefore “entertain an explosive variety of ideas by assembling basic concepts like thing, place, path, actor, cause, and goal into propositions” (27). Pinker calls language “the original sharing app” (27) and notes that the invention of writing as well as the printing press and other devices gave language more power. Sharing ideas through writing created connected communities, enabling them to develop mutually agreed-on rules about people’s conduct. For example, most societies agree on freedom of speech. Pinker claims that “with the right rules, a community of less than fully rational thinkers can cultivate rational thoughts,” which he calls the “wisdom of crowds” (27). This kind of wisdom is more likely to result in mutually beneficial arrangements than harmful ones. Pinker uses these examples to show that while humans have many inherent flaws, we can improve our living conditions via free speech, democracy, human rights, science, and education—which are all “major brainchildren of the Enlightenment” (28). By thoroughly examining potentially harmful or selfish aspects of human nature, as well as those that help us become more constructive, open-minded, and collaborative, Pinker emphasizes the benefits of enlightenment thinking and sets the stage for the rest of his argument.