The Age of Enlightenment – also called the Age of Reason – was an intellectual, cultural, and philosophical movement that developed primarily in Europe during the 18th century.
Its central aim was to promote reason, science, and freedom of thought as tools to improve society and liberate human beings from ignorance, superstition, and absolute power.
Immanuel Kant, one of the most prominent thinkers of the time, described it as: “humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity, its lazy and cowardly submission to the dogmas and formulas of religious or political authority.” Enlightenment’s motto, he proclaimed, is “Dare to understand!” and its foundational demand is freedom of thought and speech.
Enlightenment is a true milestone in the history of humanity, as it has allowed us a material, intellectual, scientific and humanistic development like never before.
Before Enlightenment, we had lived for centuries in the Dark Ages, dominated by the ideas of those in power: the church and the political establishment, embodied in kings who were considered chosen by God to guide their people. This is the origin of the majestic “we,” which still elicits a certain amount of amusement today when some politicians use it to aggrandize themselves. Kings always spoke in the first-person plural because their pronouncements were those of “God and I.” Hence the “we.”
In those times, dogmas and superstitions imposed by the church and political power were the norm and the law. If a woman dared to think for herself and contradict a man, she could be accused of witchcraft and burned alive. The Earth was, of course, the center of the universe, and the sun and the stars revolved around it.
Most people were illiterate, and prior to the invention of the printing press around 1450, there was no reading material available to commoners either. Only nobles and clergy had access to books.
The first of Enlightenment’s values, reason, was so important because our common habits of thinking are not particularly reasonable. Thinkers like Kant, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, and Adam Smith were keenly aware of our irrational passions and weaknesses, which is why they insisted on the use of reason.
With the emphasis on the second of the values, science, instead of arriving at the truth through faith and dogmas, observation and experimentation were valued as methods to discover it.
Knowing that science has allowed us an unprecedented development of humanity, today we should be concerned about all the voices, especially from centers of power around the world, that discredit science.
After two centuries of trying to free ourselves from superstition, it’s worrying that our basic education textbooks in Mexico state that “there are many ways to explain reality, and science is just one of them. There is also ancestral knowledge.” Visiting a shaman is equated with a medical consultation, since science is equated with superstition. Regrettable.
It is also concerning to hear the president of the most powerful country in the world (probably not for much longer) state in a solemn speech at the United Nations that “global warming is the biggest con job in history, perpetrated by stupid people.” It is also disturbing that this same leader, accompanied by his inept Secretary of Health, affirms that vaccines cause autism.
Portuguese novelist, essayist and 1998 Literature Nobel Prize awardee José Saramago said that: “The day will come when intelligence will be despised, and stupidity will be worshipped.” I think that day has unfortunately arrived.
A fact is information without emotion or ideology, an opinion is information based on experience, ignorance is an opinion without knowledge, and stupidity is an opinion that denies the facts.
Continuing with Dr. Pinker and the third value he defends in his work, humanism: “The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historic memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion.
“They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation or religion. A categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means.”
With the Enlightenment, dogma and superstition gave way to reason and science. To know the truth, we no longer consult the church, but science. This is precisely where the publishing industry has played a crucial role, because it is through books that we have transmitted all this scientific knowledge.
The problem today is that, with the rise of social media and online content, the voices of academics, scientists, and experts have been equated with those of morons with a social media account. Nowadays, many people consider the uninformed opinion of a TikTok teenager to be worth the same as that of a scholarly scientist.
With the internet, as a speaker recently said, having become a gigantic information dump, and social networks infested with misinformation and fake news, the work of publishers as guardians of scientifically validated information is so relevant.
Academic publishers worldwide have rigorous processes for curating, selecting, and reviewing the content they publish. Their reputation is at stake with every publication. Therefore, if reliable information is needed, a book or journal published by a respected publisher is the best source.
Dr. Pinker concludes his reflections by saying that: “We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.” I hope we will follow his advice and leave behind superstition and the denial of science.