Pinker tells us that evolution guarantees lots of malevolence in the world because “natural selection consist of competition among genes to be represented in the next generation, and the organisms we see today are descendants of those that edged out their rivals in contests for mates, food and dominance.” This might be a reasonable statement for a college freshman before taking a biological anthropology or evolution course, but not a Harvard professor who often writes about human evolution. One can find, on page 25 in Pinker’s “reality-setting” chapter, Entro, Evo, Info, the deep misunderstandings of human evolution that reflect an extremely one-dimensional take on how the world works and is. These basic flaws undergird Pinker’s world view and infuse his assumptions about the processes of life with a level of simplistic determinism so deep that it is no wonder his take on systems of such massive complexity as human economic, political, ecological, and social histories, border on the facile. Rather, I want to start my review by pointing out something that has concerned me for a long time and that has grave implications for the contents and purpose of this book: Pinker’s dramatic lack of understanding of evolutionary processes and the human evolutionary record. Suffice to say that they include a demonstration of Pinker’s broad ignorance of environmental issues by the author George Monbiot in The Guardian, and evaluations of Pinker’s misrepresentation of the enlightenment itself by the historian David A Bell in The Nation and by the historian and noted humanist Peter Harrison for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Many commentators have already tackled the historical deficiencies in “Enlightenment Now”, so I won’t overlap with those commentaries here. However, because of my anthropological training, my research into human evolution and behavior, and my interest in the human condition, I cannot share in Pinker’s blithe assertions that things are truly getting better for everyone and that trusting the current dominant geo-political-economic system is going to bring us to the goals of the enlightenment (at least his version of it). I am neither a “progressophobe” nor “dataphobic.” I agree with Pinker that many material, and some social, facets of life have gotten better for many, but not all, people across the past three centuries, and I especially agree with Pinker’s musings on terrorism and knowledge. And, based on my work on human evolution, human capacities, and human histories, I am relatively optimistic about humanity. Let me be clear about a few things: I both practice and love science, especially evolutionary biology. Steven Pinker wrote Enlightenment Now thinking he was making the case for “reason, science, humanism, and progress.” But instead produced a 556 page text filled with some interesting statistics, a few valid insights, a lot of naiveté, and a stunning lack of empathy.
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