Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Also called ecomodernism, this niche of environmentalism dismisses romantic notions of nature as well as fatalistic views that perceive humans as an inherently parasitic force on the earth. Instead, eco-pragmatism emphasizes that issues such as wildlife extinction, pollution, and climate change are solvable problems that we can tackle with the right legislation and new technology. Pinker endorses eco-pragmatism as a more effective alternative to “traditional” environmentalism, which he considers overly shaming and alarmist.

Pinker uses the term “declinism” to refer to pessimistic views that society is in decline and that people’s freedoms and living conditions will continue to worsen. His work is an argument against declinism because he uses statistical evidence to show that the most important measures of quality of life are improving rather than declining. Throughout the book, Pinker refers to various declinist thinkers and ideas—and uses qualitative evidence to debunk their arguments.

Pinker accuses some intellectuals of “Progressophobia,” a pessimistic worldview which insists that societies aren’t progressing. He argues that people make progressophobic arguments to sound clever but that such arguments are based on availability bias rather than on rational analysis of data.