A critical review of his book, Enlightenment Now:
"[Unlike Pinker] the great writers of the Enlightenment, contrary to the way they are often caricatured, were mostly skeptics at heart. They had a taste for irony, an appreciation of paradox, and took delight in wit. They appreciated complexity, rarely shied away from difficulty, and generally had a deep respect for the learning of those who had preceded them. . . ."
"It is not entirely clear what Pinker means by 'the Enlightenment.' At one point he calls it 'a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory,' but at another a coherent 'project.' . . . . "
"But he wraps his arguments up in such a thick layer of exaggeration and misinterpretation that the book does more harm than good. It makes use of selective data, dubious history, and, when all else fails, a contempt for 'intellectuals' . . . ."
"Like a TED Talk, Enlightenment Now is easy to summarize." More
"It is not entirely clear what Pinker means by 'the Enlightenment.' At one point he calls it 'a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory,' but at another a coherent 'project.' . . . . "
"But he wraps his arguments up in such a thick layer of exaggeration and misinterpretation that the book does more harm than good. It makes use of selective data, dubious history, and, when all else fails, a contempt for 'intellectuals' . . . ."
"Like a TED Talk, Enlightenment Now is easy to summarize." More