What Is Enlightenment?: A History & Sociology of Knowledge

This book is a historical, philosophical, and sociological inquiry into knowledge. For thousands of years we have thought that we were divinely enabled to know and control our destiny. Only relatively recently, over the past half century, have we begun to realize that we are deeply flawed organic organisms with the unique capacity for conscious thought and constrained agency. This book seeks to take a historical and functionalist approach of the phenomenon of knowledge. I want to explain what it is, how it is created, and what it can and cannot do. I hope this book can help enlighten a new generation about the possibilities and constraints of human progress, which depend on our flawed, but useful tool of knowledge. The fate of our species rests on our continued daring to know.