Enlightenment Now

Pinker offers the following lessons:

1. “Entropy” is important in grasping the human condition.

The phenomenon of entropy is central to the human condition. According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy describes how the elements in a “closed system” gradually disperse over time and become less useful. When a fire dims, for example, and its heat dissipates, it can no longer boil water or cook food. This law is important in understanding human life. Human biological structures, like that of any organism, allow people to absorb the energy they need to remain alive and to survive and counteract entropy. How could such an improbable being come into existence? Religious thinkers assert that only God could design such a complex creature. To the extent that Enlightenment thinkers were religious, some were deists, theists or pantheists. And some were atheists and not religious at all. Deists believed that only a deity could explain the origins of complex organisms like human beings, and that “God set the universe in motion and then stepped back, allowing it to unfold according to the laws of nature.”