
Enlightenment Now
The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
About this listen
Instant New York Times best-seller. A New York Times notable book of 2018. One of The Economist's books of the year.
"My new favorite book of all time." (Bill Gates)
If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: 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.
Includes a Bonus PDF with charts and graphs.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 Steven Pinker (P)2018 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Narrator Arthur Morey hits the sweet spot with a balanced delivery pairing clarity and judicious pace to make Pinker's timely and uplifting message accessible to the thoughtful listener.... Listeners who enjoy a challenge will find this beautifully written, masterfully presented audiobook rewarding." (AudioFile)
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Pinker is truly a brilliant and lucid explainer...
- By Rudi on 06-17-09
By: Steven Pinker
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The Sense of Style
- The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Sense of Style, the best-selling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.
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A great book, done a great injustice by the audio
- By M. Kunze on 10-17-14
By: Steven Pinker
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Words and Rules
- The Ingredients of Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 2000, Words and Rules remains one of Pinker's most provocative and accessible books, illuminating the fascinating relationship between the brain, the mind, and how language makes us humans.
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Amazing how much irregular verbs can teach.
- By Tristan on 04-10-16
By: Steven Pinker
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The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....
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Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
- By J. C. on 10-28-12
By: Steven Pinker
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Essays in Humanism
- By: Albert Einstein
- Narrated by: David Rockefeller Jr.
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Nuclear proliferation, Zionism, and the global economy are just a few of the insightful and surprisingly prescient topics scientist Albert Einstein discusses in this volume of collected essays from between 1931 and 1950. Written with a clear voice and a thoughtful perspective on the effects of science, economics, and politics in daily life, Einstein’s writings provide an intriguing view inside the mind of a genius addressing the philosophical challenges of the Depression, the Second World War, and more.
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Well narrated but only mildly interesting
- By Michael on 04-06-13
By: Albert Einstein
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Factfulness
- Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
- By: Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling
- Narrated by: Richard Harries
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of carrying only opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends - what percentage of the world's population live in poverty; why the world's population is increasing; how many girls finish school - we systematically get the answers wrong. In Factfulness, professor of international health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two longtime collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens.
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Great Read not for Listening
- By carlos gomez on 06-01-18
By: Hans Rosling, and others
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The Little Book of Humanism
- Universal Lessons on Finding Purpose, Meaning and Joy
- By: Alice Roberts, Andrew Copson
- Narrated by: Karen Cass, Oliver Hembrough
- Length: 2 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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We all want to lead a happy life. Traditionally, when in need of guidance, comfort or inspiration, many people turn to religion. But there has been another way to learn how to live well - the humanist way - and in today's more secular world, it is more relevant than ever. In The Little Book of Humanism, Alice Roberts and Andrew Copson share over 2,000 years of humanist wisdom through an uplifting collection of stories, quotes and meditations on how to live an ethical and fulfilling life, grounded in reason and humanity.
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not disappointed
- By neil c. knopf on 09-27-21
By: Alice Roberts, and others
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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The Moral Arc
- How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer, Melody Zownir
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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We are living in the most moral period of our species’ history. Best-selling author Michael Shermer’s most accomplished and ambitious book to date demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral. Ever since the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment thinkers consciously applied the methods of science to solve social and moral problems.
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Us is getting bigger, them is getting smaller
- By Gary on 02-02-15
By: Michael Shermer
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Free Will
- By: Sam Harris
- Narrated by: Sam Harris
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.
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Wrong Question
- By Jennifer on 11-15-14
By: Sam Harris
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Holotropic Breathwork
- A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy
- By: Stanislav Grof, Christina Grof, Jack Kornfield - foreword
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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Holotropic means "moving toward wholeness," from the Greek holos (whole) and trepein (moving in the direction of). The breathwork utilizes the remarkable healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. These states engender a rich array of experiences with unique healing potential - reliving childhood memories, infancy, birth and prenatal life, and elements from the historical and archetypal realms of the collective unconscious.
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I wish I knew this earlier
- By mark west on 05-18-20
By: Stanislav Grof, and others
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Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
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Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
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Rationality: From AI to Zombies
- By: Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Narrated by: George Thomas, Robert DeRoeck, Aaron Silverbook
- Length: 49 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it actually mean to be rational? Not Hollywood-style "rational", where you forsake all human feeling to embrace Cold Hard Logic, but where you make good decisions, even when it's hard; where you reason well, even in the face of massive uncertainty; where you recognize and make full use of your fuzzy intuitions and emotions, rather than trying to discard them. In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes.
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Great content. Some chapters should be re-recorded.
- By Geordie on 03-13-18
Would you listen to Enlightenment Now again? Why?
Very important information is contained within it and review of good books is always good for the soul.What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
Logical conclusions based on substantive research and study of applicable information.Did the narration match the pace of the story?
for the most partWas this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I wish I could haveAny additional comments?
I perceive an unfair and biased antagonism (bordering on self-denial) by this author against the very considerable contributions of religious thinkers to the development of Enlightenment Era thinking upon the western culture and especially upon many of the most influential writers and most notably, the American Founding Fathers.Most assuredly men of far less appreciation for spiritual resources like Thomas Paine were a great part of the building of the nation we call the land of the free but he seems almost entirely blind to the fact that religious minds held by the great majority of the people and cultures of the west is what ultimately made freedom's headquarters not only won and established but survived and prospered after all manner of threats against it continuing because (and by virtue of) of the degree of goodness of the English culture of America and their more innate inclination and devotion to freedom and sense of righteousness before their God.
Outside of those concerns I was impressed by his stubborn tough love application of facts to dispute the anti western civ doctrine of most college academics and anti-religious ideologues against America's contributions to the great improvements to life for men of all nations and people.
Credit where credit is due
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Good book although a bit political skewed
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changed my perspective
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I love this book!
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Truth through data
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Tempered optimizum
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Excellent. Level sets your perspective
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Long and difficult at times but well worth the effort.
An important book for our time.
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I needed to hear this.
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An Important Message For All
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