A really engaging and surprisingly positive look at the world and what we have to face together as a species. It argues a case for science and reason in a very enviable way! There’s a choice phrase or interesting statistic on every page that you just want to have in your back pocket for next time you get drawn into an argument online or grandad says something a bit “not quite right”. It gave me a lot to think about too admittedly... For example, I have quite strong opinions on equality and economic disparity’s effect on society that I wasn’t expecting to be challenged!

I was impressed with Pinker’s “Better Angels” tome so keen to read this one. This book is marginally smaller, though there are another 100 pages of notes and indices besides the 450 pages of exposition. The subtitle is a good statement of the argument. I am completely convinced, but then I was already a believer. It seems to me beyond argument that the modern world stands on these four legs. Science determines the character of modernity from the food we eat, to the clothes we wear and the electronic machine I write this on. Reason is what has generated science from the interaction of human brains with the material world. Humanism is what all moderate religions have become give or take a little mumbo jumbo, and progress is a fact. Look at infant mortality in the 19th century in the most advanced countries in the world and imagine yourself with toothache, not to mention nastier afflictions at the same date. How is it that when we look back we see (almost) unmixed improvement, yet when we look forward, cultural pessimists only see doom and disaster? Global warming or nuclear war may yet deliver the doomsday scenarios, but not yet, not yet. Pinker is characteristically detailed in his examination of his areas of interest. His first 40 pages are a description and a defence of enlightenment ideas. Then the bulk of the book, about 300 pages is a blow by blow defence of progress from longevity and infant mortality, through wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy and equal rights all the way to happiness, existential threats and the future of progress. As I have confessed, I did not need much convincing, but I think he marshals an unanswerable case that Enlightenment thinking has enormously increased human flourishing. His chapter on Democracy is particularly good, showing how despite political scientists being repeatedly “astonished by the shallowness and incoherence of people’s political beliefs” the system works “despite these qualities or in some important respects because of them” Pessimists will say humans now cover the globe like a disease, but the facts are that we have reached peak child, even the global poor are having their lives improve year on year and with knowledge, reason, science and sensible policies, there is hope that problems like world hunger and environmental deterioration can be solved. But are we any happier? This too is an intriguing chapter which I won’t spoil by trying to summarise. Suffice it to say, Pinker’s deployment of the facts is impressive. Pinker ends by writing that “life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, knowledge better than superstition and ignorance”. Who could disagree? Seth Jenkinson Sept 2018