Steven M Steven Pinker, born in Montreal, Canada, received a B.A. in Psychology from McGill University in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1979. From 1982 to 2003, he taught at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he immersed himself in the study of children's language learning patterns, and eventually became the head of the MIT Center for Cognitive Neurology. Johnstone Professor of Family Psychology at Harvard University. In 1994, his Language Instinct became a blockbuster bestseller and was named the American Scientist's 100 Best Science Books of the 20th Century. In 2003, he was appointed Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. From 2008 to 2013, he was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of Harvard College.
What is Enlightenment? In 1784, Kant replied in an essay entitled "Enlightenment" that enlightenment refers to "the liberation of man from the immaturity imposed on himself", from the state of "rules and precepts" of obedience to religious or political authority because of "laziness and cowardice". He declared that the slogan of the Enlightenment was: "Courage to use your own reason!" "Its basic condition is freedom of thought and speech." An era must not conclude a treaty that would prevent later generations from expanding their horizons, enhancing their knowledge and eliminating their mistakes. This would be a crime against human nature, because the inherent mission of human nature lies in this progress. ”
Kant's views are echoed in the book The Beginning of Infinity by the 21st-century physicist David Deutsch. In this book defending the Enlightenment, Deutsch argues that if we boldly apply reason, we can make progress in all fields of science, politics, and morality:
Optimism (in the sense I advocate) is the theory that all failures, all evil, are the result of a lack of knowledge. ...... Problems are inevitable, because there is always an infinite distance between knowledge and the state of completeness. Some problems are difficult, but it is a mistake to confuse difficult problems with problems that cannot be solved. Problems can be solved, and every particular evil is a solvable problem. A civilization of optimism is open, it is not afraid of innovation, and it is based on a tradition of criticism. Its systems are constantly improving, and the most important knowledge achieved by these systems is how to detect and eliminate erroneous knowledge.
What is the Enlightenment? We can't find a formal answer, because the era named after Kant's article doesn't have clear chronological boundaries, unlike the Olympics, which had opening and closing ceremonies. At the same time, the movement did not have a vow or creed with a clear purpose. Generally speaking, the Enlightenment refers to the last 60 years of the 18th century, but it can be traced back to the scientific revolution and the era of reason in the 17th century, or to the heyday of classical liberalism in the first half of the 19th century. At the time, scientific exploration challenged conventional wisdom, the bloody brutality of religious wars was fresh in people's minds, and the spread of ideas and human exchanges were more rapid and frequent than ever. Combining these factors, Enlightenment thinkers found a new way to understand the human condition. During this period, ideas sprang up, some contradictory, but there were four ideas that linked them together: reason, science, humanism, and progress.
The first idea, "reason," is the most important, because reason is non-debatable. As long as you stand up and discuss the meaning of life, or any other question, and firmly believe that the answer you give is true and convincing, then you are appealing to reason and agreeing to leave your point of view to objective standards to test. If there is anything that Enlightenment thinkers have in common, it is that they advocate the active use of rational standards to understand the world in which we live, rather than relying on empty winds, illusory sources, such as beliefs, dogmas, revelations, authority, powers, mysticism, divination, illusion, intuition, or the expository texts of religious scriptures.
It was reason that made most Enlightenment thinkers disbelieve that there was an anthropomorphic god in the world who intervened in human affairs. Reason tells us that the descriptions of miracles are unsubstantiated and questionable, that the authors of religious scriptures are real people, that the occurrence of various natural events does not take into account the well-being of mankind, that different cultures believe in different gods, that they are heavily fortified and incompatible, and that none of them is not a product of human imagination. As Montesquieu said, "If a triangle also has a god, then its god must have three sides." However, not all Enlightenment thinkers were atheists. Some of them are deists, and unlike theists, they believe that God, after unleashing the machine of the world, retreats into the background and allows the world to exist and develop according to the laws of nature. Others are pantheists who use "God" as a synonym for the laws of nature. But few of them believed in the Biblical God who made the law, called the wind and rain, and gave birth to his son.
Many writers today tend to confuse the Enlightenment's advocacy of reason with another misconception that human beings are perfect rational subjects. This is very different from historical facts, and scholars like Kant, Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and Adam Smith are inquisitive psychologists who know too well the irrational emotions and weaknesses we have. They firmly believe that only by clearly pointing out the root cause of stupidity can people have any hope of overcoming it. It can be seen that it is precisely because people's daily thinking habits do not necessarily maintain rationality, so they must be used carefully and carefully.
This leads to a second idea: science. The so-called science is the processing and refinement of reason, and in this way to explain the world. The scientific revolution is a revolution in the true sense of the word, and the discoveries it brings have become second nature to most people, so much so that we are accustomed to it and do not care about it. However, the historian David Wootton reminds that in 1600, on the eve of the Scientific Revolution, an educated Englishman understood the world like this:
He believed that witches could set off storms and flood ships on the sea. He believed that there were werewolves in the world, although they happened not to exist in Britain, but sooner or later they would be discovered in Belgium. He believed that the banshee Carl had really turned Odysseus' crew into pigs. He believed that rats grew on their own from piles of straw. He believed in the magicians of that era. He had seen the horns of the legendary unicorn, although he had never seen a unicorn.
He believed that if a person was murdered, the body would bleed as long as the murderer was present. He believed that there was an ointment in the world that could heal the wounds caused by the dagger by applying it to the dagger. He believed that the medicinal value of a plant could be judged by its shape, color, and texture, because God designed nature to make it understandable to man. He believed in alchemy, though doubtful that anyone knew how to do it. He believed that nature hated vacuums. He believed that the rainbow was God's will and that the comet was a harbinger of evil. He believed that dreams could foreshadow the future, as long as he could master the methods of interpreting dreams. Similarly, he believed that the earth stood still, and that the sun, moon, and stars circled the earth every 24 hours.
But more than 130 years later, an educated Briton would no longer believe in these things. This not only liberates humanity from ignorance, but also frees it from unnecessary fear. Sociologist Robert Scott notes that in the Middle Ages, "this idea that some external force was manipulating everyday life led to a collective delusion":
Torrential rains, thunderstorms, fierce winds, eclipses, lunar eclipses, cold snaps, heat waves, droughts, and earthquakes are all considered signs of God's wrath. In this way, the "demon of fear" lives in every corner of life. The ocean became a realm of evil, and the forest was full of demons, witches and devils, as well as real thieves and murderers. ...... When night falls, the world is also filled with signals that herald danger: comets, meteors, lunar eclipses, and the howl of wild beasts.
For Enlightenment thinkers, this process of freedom from ignorance and superstition shows both the mistakes of conventional wisdom and the scientific methods, such as skepticism, fallibilism, public debate, and empirical testing, as an effective means of guiding us to obtain reliable knowledge.
In this knowledge, there is also an understanding of oneself. The demand for a "science of man" became the theme of that era and linked Enlightenment thinkers who had diverse views on many other issues, including Montesquieu, David Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Condorcet, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, and Vico. They believe in the existence of universal humanity and believe that it can be scientifically studied. As a result, they became early practitioners of a number of disciplines that were not officially named until centuries later. They are cognitive neuroscientists who try to explain thoughts, emotions, and psychopathology through the physiological mechanisms of the brain. They are also evolutionary psychologists, trying to describe the natural state of life and identify the animal instincts that are "infused into our bodies." They are also social psychologists, writing books on the moral emotions and opposing selfish emotions that unite us, and analyzing short-sighted behaviors that interfere with perfect plans. They are also cultural anthropologists, digging up field records of travelers and explorers, both collecting data on human commonalities and focusing on the diversity of customs and habits of different cultures in the world.
The view of universal humanity leads us to a third idea: humanism. Rational and Enlightenment thinkers were generally aware of the need to establish a secular basis for morality, as they were haunted by the historical memory of centuries of religious slaughter, such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, and the wars of religion in Europe. They laid the foundation for what is today called humanism, which was to put the individual interests of men, women and children above tribal, national, national or religious glory. It is the individuals who can really feel joy and pain, happiness and sadness, not organizations or groups. Whether the purpose of this is to ensure that the greatest number of people attain maximum happiness, or out of the absolute law that "man is the end, not the means," it was the Enlightenment thinkers who, in the view of Enlightenment thinkers, it was the individual human being who had the same sensitivity to pain and happiness that gave rise to the call for moral concern.
Fortunately, human nature is prepared to respond to this call, as we are universally endowed with an ability: compassion. Compassion is sometimes referred to as kindness, compassion, compassion, etc. As long as we have the ability to sympathize with others, there is nothing to prevent the ring of compassion from extending outward, starting from the family and the clan, to embrace the whole of humanity, especially when reason tells us that we and the group to which we belong have no attributes that are different from others. We have to embrace cosmopolitanism, to accept the identity of a citizen of the world.
This humanistic sentiment prompted Enlightenment thinkers not only to condemn religious violence, but also to denounce the secular atrocities of their time, such as slavery, despotism, the abuse of the death penalty, and cruel punishments such as whipping, amputation, puncture, caesarean section, reincarnation, and burning. The Enlightenment is sometimes referred to as the "humanitarian revolution" because it led to the abolition of barbaric acts that were once pervasive in all civilizations and continued for millennia.
If the abolition of slavery and cruel punishment are not progressive, there is no progress in the world. This brings us to the fourth idea: progress. With the help of science, our understanding of the world is deepening, and compassion is expanding under the impetus of reason and cosmopolitanism. As a result, human beings can make perfect progress intellectually and morally. There is no need to succumb to the current suffering and irrational phenomena, nor to try to turn the clock back in search of the lost golden age.
We should not confuse the Enlightenment's belief in progress with the belief in 19th-century Romanticism. The Romantics believed in the power of the mystical, in law and dialectics, in struggle, evolution and destiny, in the ancient Greeks' stencision of the human age, and in the dynamics of evolution that would push human society to the ideal. However, like Kant's formulation of "increasing knowledge and reducing errors", the Enlightenment's understanding of progress was not so poetic, and progress was nothing more than a combination of reason and humanism. By paying attention to and understanding the realities of laws and customs, and trying to improve, practice, and then preserve the measures and institutions that can benefit humanity, we can gradually make the world a better place. Science itself develops gradually in a cycle of theory and experiment, accumulating experience and making continuous progress in local setbacks and regressions, and thus proving how real progress can be made.
Nor can we confuse the idea of progress with the 20th-century social remodeling movement, which was designed to facilitate technocrats and urban planners, what the political scientist James Scott called "Authoritarian High Modernism." This movement denies the existence of human nature and its complex need for beauty, nature, tradition and social intimacy. Starting from a "clean tablecloth," these modernists designed urban renewal projects that replaced vibrant street communities with highways, skyscrapers, open-air squares, and rugged buildings. They theoretically explain that "human beings will be born again" and "live in an orderly relationship of wholeness." Although these developments are also sometimes dubbed the word "progress," this usage is highly ironic, as "progress" that lacks humanist guidance is not progress.
Enlightenment thinkers did not try to shape human nature, and the progress they hoped for focused on human institutions. Man-made systems such as governments, laws, schools, markets, and international organizations are where reason comes in, and thus improves the human condition.
In this regard, the government is not a ruling institution with a sacred mission, nor is it synonymous with "society", or some embodiment of the national spirit, religious doctrine, or the soul of the race. Government is an institution invented by people on the basis of a mutually tacit social contract, the purpose of which is to coordinate people's various behaviors and curb selfish actions of others, so as to promote the well-being of citizens. As stated in the American Declaration of Independence, the most famous spiritual achievement of the Enlightenment: "In order to guarantee the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, human beings established governments among them, and the legitimate power of government is granted by the ruled." ”
Punishment was one of the powers people granted to government, and Montesquieu, Cesare Beccaria, and the founders of the United States rethinked the government's power to punish citizens. They argue that punishments are not imposed to replace Skywalker, but are an integral part of social incentives to prevent antisocial behavior from occurring without causing more harm. For example, we argue that crimes and punishments are equal, not to maintain the mysterious balance of justice from tilting, but to ensure that criminals can stop at smaller crimes and thus not escalate into larger crimes. Torture, on the other hand, whether it is a so-called "deserved crime" or not, is less effective than a modest and necessary punishment, and it also insensitive to the observer and makes the society in which it is carried out cruel and ruthless.
The Enlightenment also for the first time carried out a rational analysis of wealth. Its starting point is not how to distribute wealth, but how to create wealth. Based on economists from France, the Netherlands, and Scotland, Adam Smith developed his own theory, pointing out that large quantities of product could not be made by independent peasants or craftsmen, but on a large number of efficient professional workers, as well as those who pooled their talents, skills, and fruits of their labor to trade. Adam Smith gave the famous example of a needle maker who calculated that an independent needle maker could only make at most one pin a day, but in a factory," "one man draws iron wire, one man straightens it, one man cuts it, one man sharpens one end of the line, one man grinds the other end in order to fit the round head...", so that on average each worker can make nearly 5,000 pins in a day.
The division of labor is effective only in the market, which allows professional workers to exchange their goods and services, while Adam Smith explained that economic activity is a kind of reciprocal cooperation, what is today called a "positive-sum game", in which everyone reaps more benefits than they give up. With voluntary exchange, people benefit others by pursuing their own interests, as Adam Smith said, "Our supper comes not from the kindness of butchers, winemakers, and bakers, but from their concern for their own interests." We do not turn to their fraternity, but to their self-interest. Adam Smith is not saying that humans are extremely selfish, nor is it that humans should be. In fact, Adam Smith's concern and depth of empathy for human beings is rare in history. He simply stressed that in the marketplace, even if a person only cares about his own and his family's interests, his work will benefit everyone.
Exchange can not only make society as a whole richer, but also make it more harmonious, because in an efficient market, the cost of buying goods is always cheaper than stealing them, and for you the survival of others is always more valuable than death. As the economist Ludwig von Mises said centuries later: "If a tailor goes to war with a baker, he must bake his own bread." Many Enlightenment thinkers, including Montesquieu, Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, and Abbé de saint-Pierre, favored "doux commerce." The founders of the United States, George Washington, James Madison, and especially Alexander Hamilton, designed various institutions for the young nation of the United States to cultivate the development of commerce.
This brings us to the idea of peace, the Enlightenment. Wars have been so frequent in human history that people take it for granted that they are part of human society, and peace will come only in the age of the coming of the Messiah. But now, war is no longer considered punishment from Heaven, for which it can only endure and weep, nor is it a glorious race worth winning and celebrating. War is only a practical problem to be solved, and it will one day be solved. In Perpetual Peace, Kant lists a series of measures that would prevent leaders from dragging the country into war. Kant argued that in addition to international trade, what could prevent the outbreak of war included the establishment of a representative republic (what is today called "democracy"), openness among nations, the development of a set of norms against aggression and interference in internal affairs, the granting of free travel and immigration, and the creation of an international coalition capable of adjudicating disputes.
Although these founding fathers, framers, and enlightenment philosophers were all visionary greats, this book does not intend to set off an idolatry. Enlightenment thinkers were no more than men and women living in the 18th century, including racists, sexists, anti-Semites, slave owners and duelists. Some of their concerns seem almost incomprehensible today, and they construct a series of elaborate theories while making a lot of stupid points. What's more, they were born too early to anticipate some of the basic principles of modern people's understanding of reality.
But I believe they will be the first to stand up and agree with this. If you are in favor of reason, then your focus should be on the soundness of the mind, not on the charisma of the thinker. If you are committed to progress, then you cannot easily claim that you have figured out all the mysteries in it. If we have important theoretical discoveries about the state of human beings and the nature of progress, which are not known to enlightenment thinkers, they do not in any way affect their greatness. In my opinion, there are three such discoveries: entropy, evolution, and information.