Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead?: The Munk Debates

Steven Pinker (Harvard University),Matt Ridley,Alain De Botton,Malcolm Gladwell

Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead?: The Munk Debates
Format
Paperback
Publisher
House of Anansi Press Ltd ,Canada
Country
Canada
Published
7 June 2016
Pages
128
ISBN
9781487001681

Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead?: The Munk Debates

Steven Pinker (Harvard University),Matt Ridley,Alain De Botton,Malcolm Gladwell

Progress. It is one of the animating concepts of the modern era. From the Enlightenment onwards, the West has had an enduring belief that through the evolution of institutions, innovations, and ideas, the human condition is improving. This process is supposedly accelerating as new technologies, individual freedoms, and the spread of global norms empower individuals and societies around the world. But is progress inevitable? Its critics argue that human civilization has become different, not better, over the last two and a half centuries. What is seen as a breakthrough or innovation in one period becomes a setback or limitation in another. In short, progress is an ideology not a fact; a way of thinking about the world as opposed to a description of reality.

In the seventeenth semi-annual Munk Debates, which was held in Toronto on November 6, 2015, pioneering cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and bestselling author Matt Ridley squared off against noted philosopher Alain de Botton and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell to debate whether humankind’s best days lie ahead.

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