Abstract
Is the world crumbing? In Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Steven Pinker invites us to revisit our defeatist assumptions about the state of the world, often influenced by our individual and collective psychological biases. Building on a rich historical approach, Pinker shows that the world is doing much better than ever considering several dimensions such as health, wealth, inequality, peace, safety, knowledge and democracy. There is no doubt in Steven Pinker’s mind; this progress is the result of the Enlightenment values of reason, science and humanism, as opposed to authority, tradition and dogma. According to him, today is the most wonderful time to be born.
This book is of great interest to organizational studies considering that in recent years organization studies have come much closer to ‘wicked’ problems in and around organizations. This dynamic has translated into significant interest from organization scholars in topics that address such societal issues. Over the past decade or so, Organization Studies has for instance published seven special issues on societal issues and/or their organizational implications; moral agency in organizations (2006, Vol. 27, Is. 3), climate change (2012, Vol. 33, Is. 11), social movements and corporations (2013, Vol. 34, Is. 5–6), the dark side of organizations (2014, Vol. 35, Is. 2), organizational and institutional trust (2015, Vol.36, Is. 9), resistance in and around organizations (2017, Vol. 38, Is. 9), and finally, inequalities and institutions (2018, Vol. 39, Is. 9). Organization Studies is no exception insofar as this trend is also visible in most other journals covering our field. The path may have been long and turbulent, but it seems like our research community has seriously taken a ‘social’ – or perhaps a ‘sustainability’ – turn.
Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard, researching visual cognition and psycholinguistics. His book Enlightenment Now examines a seemingly mundane but crucial question: Is the world falling apart? Extreme poverty, climate change, inequalities, wars, genocides, refugee crisis, the world seems to be getting worse despite reaching levels of knowledge, technology, wisdom, innovation and wealth that humanity has rarely witnessed. This is at least what the intelligentsia tends to convey. Put in Pinker’s words, ‘both the left and the right . . . include pessimism about the way the world is heading, cynicism about the institutions of modernity, and an inability to conceive of a higher purpose in anything other than religion’ (p. xvii). What if the world is doing much better? With his long-term historical perspective, attentive to psycho-cognitive processes, Pinker argues that despite the generalized pessimism and ‘progressophobia’ (p. 39), our world is getting better on a deluge of metrics.
Enlightenment Now is structured in three somewhat unequal parts. The first, ‘Enlightenment’, has three chapters in which the author lays the foundation of his arguments. In the first chapter Pinker defines Enlightenment. He is, however, careful in his definition. Emphasizing the plurality of definitions of the Enlightenment, he suggests that ‘the thinkers of the Enlightenment sought a new understanding of the human condition. The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism and progress’ (p. 8). Pinker concludes this chapter by reminding readers of the significance of three core ideas that shape the human condition and the narrative of human progress: entropy, evolution and information. In the second chapter, Pinker dives into the conceptual definition of entropy, evolution and information concepts. Entropy refers to the natural process of increasing disorder and chaos within closed systems as defined in the second law of thermodynamics: ‘there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than for them to go right’ (p. 24). Evolution is the idea that human reproduction is based on a competitive process of natural selection which not only may generate happiness and harmony but is conducive to disorder, conflict and greed. Last, information refers to the strength of human cognition which allows humans to analyse, interpret, theorize and share via language. Information is thus closely related to knowledge creation, while information is vital in fighting against entropy and evolution in that it allows humans to organize and improve their fate incrementally if they can ‘come up with norms and institutions that channel parochial interests into universal benefits’ (p. 28). In the third chapter, Pinker suggests that conservatism and fundamentalism, especially religious and political ones, are ‘counter-Enlightenments’ in the sense that they go against the values of the Enlightenment. Throughout the chapters, unsurprisingly, Pinker suggests that fostering reason, science and humanism both individually and collectively should be the chosen avenue for humanity to pursue its progress and overcome the ‘counter-Enlightenments’ as well as the irrationalists, i.e. those who favour ‘the heart over the head, the limbic system over the cortex, blinking over thinking, McCoy over Spock’ (p. 351).
The second part, ‘Progress’, is the core of the book. It develops into seventeen chapters, fifteen of which deal with specific societal issues. The first discusses our individual and collective psychological biases which lead us to give more importance to negative news than to positive. Pinker suggests that these biases nurture ‘progressophobia’, a phenomenon to which the political, intellectual and media elites seemingly contribute. Interestingly, Pinker argues that ‘progressophobia’ is influenced by the gap between a fast-paced entropy and a slow-paced improvement. As Pinker puts it, ‘bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren’t built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle’ (p. 41). The last chapter of this part reflects on the future of progress and the issues that humanity is facing. The remaining fifteen chapters of this second part deal with specific issues: life, health, sustenance, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, knowledge, quality of life, happiness and existential threats. In each chapter, Pinker discusses the progress trends of each issue and explains the underlying mechanisms. While Pinker tries not to pretend that ‘all the trends are positive or that the problems facing us are minor’, he nevertheless suggests that all kinds of problems, whether environmental or social, ‘are solvable, given the right knowledge’ (p. 121). In other words, the ideals of the Enlightenment should offer enough tools to overcome our most problematic issues, including that of climate change.
In the final part of the book, Pinker builds on three chapters to defend the core values of the Enlightenment. In the first chapter, on reason, Pinker criticizes the polarization of politics, both from the left as well as from the right, for questioning reason. He is equally critical of academics and media elites in the threat of the exercise of reason. In the second chapter, on science, Pinker suggests that science is the best of humanity’s achievements, more so than literature and the arts. He questions the anti-scientific rhetoric and stresses the importance of distinguishing science from the few deviations in which it has been used for immoral purposes. Pinker rightly recalls the great danger that our societies are facing with the gradual disinvestment from humanities. As he puts it, ‘a society without historical scholarship is like a person without memory: deluded, confused, easily exploited’ (p. 406). In the final chapter, on humanism, Pinker defines humanism as ‘the goal of maximizing human flourishing – life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience’, which promotes ‘a non-supernatural basis for meaning and ethics: good without God’ (p. 410). He strongly criticizes humanism’s intellectual opponents, especially those who label it as utilitarianism, those who believe that virtue cannot exist without God, and those who argue that humans have a deep need for spirituality for their fulfilment.
In a nutshell, Pinker argues that humanity has made tremendous progress in all areas of human lives, and that this trend will most likely continue with the impetus of science, reason and humanism, provided that we move from dogmatism (mainly political and religious) and fatalism vis-à-vis the state of the world. I see here several good reasons to read this stimulating book. First, it is a refreshing book that is out of the ordinary. While everyone reminds us daily that the world is crumbling and that the stupidity of the human species will lead to its extinction (what is happening to the Amazon while I am writing this review is a good example), the pragmatism of a historical and statistical approach shows that the world isn’t doing so badly. Whether we agree or disagree fundamentally with the rosy vision of Pinker, speaking about the state of the world immerses us in the deep social processes and dynamics of views, perceptions and meanings. Second, and related to the previous idea, this book implicitly raises a major epistemological question about the role of science in society. Pinker speaks mainly of the hard sciences and their paramount contribution to human progress. But he briefly mentions the importance of the social sciences and humanities. In this sense, I believe that the organization studies community should further question itself on how our theoretical contributions are improving this world, and what we could do differently to assist the world in its progress (see review on Factfulness, Lefsrud, 2018). Scientists are developing ideas and products. We are developing ideas. Performativity can allow our ideas to turn into better practices with ‘self-fulfilling’ theories (Martí & Gond, 2018), but is this enough? Third, I do believe that the historical approach used in this book is powerful. There are things that can emerge only from a long-term perspective. Pinker’s historical approach and great work of systematic documentation perhaps have something to teach us in organizational studies. While organizational studies are reconnecting with the richness and importance of history (Vaara & Lamberg, 2016), this could be further emphasized to enjoy the historical richness. Finally, Enlightenment Now is written in a simplistic but powerful way. What is fascinating is its ease of reading and illustrative quality. The book is full of statistical data, graphs and examples. Numbers and graphs are always questionable, but their use in this book is very relevant and compelling.
However, like any intellectual endeavour, Enlightenment Now has some apparent shortcomings. They mainly relate to ideological tendencies that can be disconcerting. I will here briefly sketch some of them without questioning the quality of the intellectual journey taken by Pinker. First, one might disagree with the overly golden view of our world. While Pinker recognizes the many threats we are facing, he seems to naively believe that our established institutions, based on science and reason, will help us face such entropy. Yet, the worst disasters humanity has experienced were usually unforeseen and beyond our ability to imagine. Second, Pinker presents his statistics and data as absolute truth. This book leaves no room for doubt, questioning or even interpretations. But are figures and numbers useful inventions or absolute truth? I tend to think about them as indications, but Pinker presents them as undebatable truths. On top of that, Pinker disregards the mere distinction of absolute and relative numbers. While our world is doing much better, it might not be doing as well as it should be considering other factors such as knowledge and wealth. Recent reports show, for instance, that life expectancy is starting to decline in developed countries, while these countries have never had so many resources to care for their lives and health properly.
Third, Pinker criticizes extremists, but his ideas seem to take on an extreme character. When it comes to religion, Pinker tends in a way to push atheism as the only way to protect the principles of Enlightenment. Should religious beliefs and reason necessarily be opposed as suggested by Pinker? I am not so sure. Centuries of research show that religion is a complex and multidimensional social phenomenon. Moreover, convinced that liberalism would solve all of our issues, Pinker hardly discusses the moral limits of markets whereas our global issues are mainly value-related (Sandel, 2012). One might also be surprised by Pinker’s scientism which he describes as the best invention of humans; simply, as Rabelais would put it, ‘science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul’. This leads to the final point that this book might be missing: Pinker convincingly argues for the defence of science and reason, vital elements of the Enlightenment, but he doesn’t provide answers as to why so many people around the globe feel that their lives are deteriorating. The author considers pessimists as often coming from political extremes, but is there nothing more profound as a possible interpretation of general malaise, perhaps in the very foundations of the society we have created? Is the general discomfort described in the book partly related to the fact that we have moved from a market economy to a market society, as Michael Sandel would put it? To those questions, Pinker shows no empathy.
In sum, one could argue that humankind’s ability to organize its activities is also significant progress. Although the substance of organizing and management existed well before Mayo, Roethlisberger, Taylor, Barnard and Simon, our understanding of organizing and organizations has significantly evolved and advanced over the last century. While organizing is a cross-cutting process in all areas of our societies, one of the intriguing questions for me, as a scholar of OS, having read Pinker’s book is: What is, and can be, the contribution of organization and management studies to the progress of humankind? Anybody who considers this as an invitation for future debate and empirical effort, be my guest!