Summer Reading 2018

Book Cover – Enlightenment Now – By Steven Pinker

In 2018, incoming Honors College students read Dr. Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, which Bill Gates called his “new favorite book of all time.” Dr. Pinker has become known for advancing the ideas that the great successes the world has enjoyed are mainly taken for granted and that the scientific revolution and human reason have enabled (and are continuing to enable) the human condition to become fundamentally and measurably better. A popular, influential, and provocative account of how different disciplines can be fused together to create a better world, we selected this book, in part, because it articulates its positions—and its opposition to other ideas and practices—with clarity and civility. The Honors College, in partnership with the Cognitive Science department, invited Dr. Pinker to lecture and meet with students that fall.