Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason Science Humanism and Progress

[Page 2] ALSO BY STEVEN PINKER Language Learnability and Language Development Learnability and Cognition The Language Instinct How the Mind Works Words and Rules The Blank Slate The Stuff of Thought The Better Angels of Our Nature Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles The Sense of Style EDITED BY STEVEN PINKER Visual Cognition Connections and Symbols (with Jacques Mehler) Lexical and Conceptual Semantics (with Beth Levin) The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004 [Page 4] VIKING An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 penguin.com Copyright © 2018 by Steven Pinker Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Charts rendered by Ilavenil Subbiah ISBN 9780525427575 (hardcover) ISBN 9780698177888 (ebook) ISBN 9780525559023 (international edition) Version_3 [Page 5] TO Harry Pinker (1928–2015) optimist Solomon Lopez (2017– ) and the 22nd century [Page 6] Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind. —Baruch Spinoza Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achieva