If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.

Steven Pinker’s new book on the Enlightenment is a huge hit. Too bad it gets the Enlightenment wrong.

This dispute has many components, but one turns on just how optimistic we should be about the fruits of the Enlightenment. Pinker is right to push back against tendencies to view the Enlightenment purely through a dark prism: as the prime driver and fundamental cause of racism, European barbarity, and colonialism.

Pinker is right that we still have “two cultures.” He’s wrong about which one is dominant today.