Steven Pinker

First, decades ago, Edgar Cayce, “the Sleeping Prophet,” tells me that animals don’t have souls; Now, come to find out, or, according to Stephen Pinker that is; people don’t have them either. Meanwhile, Deepak Chopra tells me; no, we don’t HAVE souls, we ARE souls. Well, alright. We all have opinions about the noumenal world. And if I understood it right, one of the things the author is telling us is that, some of them come from the Age of Enlightenment, and some we only think did.
Mr. Pinker immerses us in the Age of Enlightenment's principles and varying philosophies, quoting from the movement's various members and arguing for (science, humanism, logic) and against (brands of metaphysics that drift into religion) those ideas and/or our assumptions about them, while citing and praising the many actual results.
For the most part, I liked what the author had to say. Fortified with numerous charts and graphs, he explains all the ways in which mankind is better off, not worse, than it ever was before, despite the prevalent fears engendered by the media and several common failures of cognitive function (such as a tendency to assume that correlation=causation, or an assumption that an anecdote is as strong, evidentially, as statistics---although he often opts for the anecdote to make a point).
I’m guessing that few will agree with every conclusion he comes to, or appreciate the criticisms that are flung left and right . . . though I’d say, most of his sympathies lay with the former, politically speaking.
With a few reservations, all in all, I’d say it’s an enlightening book. 😊
(Narrated by Arthur Morey)… (more)