Moral Arc

Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Lu-ther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics and moral philosophy.

Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the au-thority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, peo-ple began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In this provocative and compelling book, Shermer will ex-plain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepti-cism scientific ways of thinking have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever clos-er to a more just world.