Science Is, Undeniably, Making the World a Better Place: A Conversation With Steven Pinker
Oliver Burkeman explores human nature, violence, feminism, and religion with one of the world’s most controversial cognitive scientists. Can he dent Steven Pinker’s optimism?
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In the week that I interview the cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker in his office at Harvard, police release the agonizing recordings of emergency calls made during the Sandy Hook school shootings. In Yemen, a suicide attack on the defense ministry kills more than 50 people. An American teacher is shot dead as he goes jogging in Libya. Several people are killed in riots between political factions in Thailand, and peacekeepers have to be dispatched to the Central African Republic.
In short, it’s not hard to find anecdotes that seem to contradict a guiding principle behind much of Pinker’s work—which is that science and human reason are, slowly but unmistakably, making the world a better place.
Repeatedly during our conversation, I seek to puncture the silver-haired professor’s quietly relentless optimism. If the ongoing tolls of war and violence can’t do it, what about the prevalence in America of unscientific beliefs about the origins of life? Or the devastating potential impacts of climate change, paired with the news—also released in the week we meet—that 23 percent of Americans don’t believe it’s happening, up seven percentage points in just eight months?
I try. But it proves far from easy.
Mais
In short, it’s not hard to find anecdotes that seem to contradict a guiding principle behind much of Pinker’s work—which is that science and human reason are, slowly but unmistakably, making the world a better place.
Repeatedly during our conversation, I seek to puncture the silver-haired professor’s quietly relentless optimism. If the ongoing tolls of war and violence can’t do it, what about the prevalence in America of unscientific beliefs about the origins of life? Or the devastating potential impacts of climate change, paired with the news—also released in the week we meet—that 23 percent of Americans don’t believe it’s happening, up seven percentage points in just eight months?
I try. But it proves far from easy.
Mais
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