Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: humanism’s struggle against entropy

At the 2026 World Humanist Congress in Ottawa, held under the theme Humanism as Resistance, American philosopher and author Rebecca Newberger Goldstein offered an ambitious and original interpretation of humanism. Drawing on the philosophy of Spinoza and the science of thermodynamics, she argued that humanism is part of life’s fundamental struggle against disintegration, ignorance and despair.

Photo credits: Humanists International

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama and author of The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, began with a striking declaration: humanism has the power to remake the world because it has already done so. Many of the institutions now taken for granted – democracy, scientific inquiry, universal education, civil liberties, human rights, public health and social welfare – had been shaped over centuries by convictions at the heart of humanism. Foremost among these was the belief that every human being matters equally, regardless of ancestry, religion or social status, and that human flourishing can be defended on entirely secular grounds.

These institutions had not descended from heaven or been dictated by sacred texts. They had been argued into existence by people who believed that human beings could use reason, evidence and compassion to improve their collective existence.

Yet today, Goldstein observed, many of these achievements are under assault. Authoritarianism, religious nationalism and organised disinformation threaten institutions painstakingly developed over generations. Was the humanist project itself naïve? Had humanists placed too much faith in humanity’s capacity for reason and cooperation? To answer these questions, she turned to an unexpected source: the second law of thermodynamics.

Spinoza and the struggle to exist

Goldstein invited her audience to imagine a young Jewish philosopher in seventeenth-century Holland, excommunicated by his religious community and regarded with suspicion by Christian Europe. Baruch Spinoza earned his living grinding lenses while developing a revolutionary philosophy of nature, human existence and ethics.

In his Ethics, Spinoza proposed that human beings are part of the natural world, subject to its laws, yet capable of understanding those laws and using that understanding to flourish. Central to his philosophy was the concept of conatus: the striving of every existing thing to persevere in its being. For Spinoza, human flourishing involved increasing our capacity to understand, to act and to experience joy. Ethics was concerned with organising our lives and societies to enhance these capacities rather than diminish them through fear, ignorance or domination.

Goldstein suggested that Spinoza had anticipated something remarkable about the nature of existence itself. To exist, she argued, is to resist forces that would otherwise bring about our dissolution. Modern physics provides an illuminating way of understanding this struggle.

Life against entropy

Entropy is a concept in thermodynamics associated with the dispersal of energy and the tendency of isolated physical systems towards thermodynamic equilibrium. According to the second law of thermodynamics, entropy in an isolated system cannot decrease. Living organisms, however, are not isolated systems. They take in energy from their surroundings and use it to maintain their internal organisation, repair damage, grow and reproduce. Life sustains its extraordinary complexity by continually expending energy.

Goldstein described life as a temporary and local resistance to entropy. Human beings are no exception. Our bodies require constant energy to maintain their organisation, and eventually they succumb to ageing and death. Yet during the interval between birth and death, remarkable possibilities arise.

This, Goldstein suggested, is where humanism enters the picture. The struggle against disintegration can be understood not only biologically but also intellectually, morally and socially. Knowledge must be acquired against ignorance. Health must be maintained against disease. Cooperation must be cultivated against conflict. Justice must be defended against exploitation and domination.

In Goldstein’s striking formulation, human flourishing is a counter-entropic achievement.

She extended the analogy to human institutions. Democracy, education, science, public health and systems of justice are elaborate structures created through sustained human effort. Like sea walls holding back the ocean, they require constant maintenance, renewal and vigilance. Their survival cannot be taken for granted.

The comparison is philosophically suggestive rather than a literal application of thermodynamics to morality. Nevertheless, it provides a memorable way of understanding why human progress is neither automatic nor irreversible.

The equal mattering of human beings

Underlying Goldstein’s argument was a conviction central to her recent philosophical work: human beings possess a profound longing to matter. We want our lives to count for something. We seek recognition, purpose, significance and belonging. This longing can inspire extraordinary achievements, but it can also lead us towards destructive forms of collective identity.

Humanism, she argued, offers an ethical response to this instinct by insisting that everyone matters equally. Authoritarianism represents a fundamental rejection of that principle. It concentrates power in the hands of a few while diminishing the agency and dignity of others. Goldstein invoked George Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which the original principle of equality is corrupted into the notorious claim that some animals are more equal than others.

Religious nationalism presents a related danger. By investing a particular religious or national identity with transcendent significance, it can encourage people to regard outsiders as less worthy, or even as enemies. Goldstein was careful to distinguish this from religious or spiritual experience itself. Humanism, she argued, should respect the diversity of human lives, including those for whom spirituality provides meaning. What must be resisted is any ideology, religious or secular, that assigns superior moral worth to one section of humanity.

The third threat identified by the Congress was anti-science disinformation. Science, Goldstein argued, is among humanity’s greatest humanist achievements because it establishes publicly accessible standards for testing claims about reality. Scientific knowledge does not depend upon the authority of priests, rulers or supposedly infallible individuals. Even established theories can be challenged by evidence. This requires what she called epistemic modesty: the willingness to recognise that our beliefs may be mistaken and must remain open to correction.

Organised disinformation undermines these shared standards. When evidence is dismissed as merely another expression of political or cultural allegiance, public discussion becomes increasingly vulnerable to manipulation by those with the greatest power to dominate it. For Goldstein, defending science was therefore inseparable from defending democracy and human equality.

The political challenge

Goldstein’s address was sharply critical of contemporary developments in the United States. She contrasted the democratic principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence – that legitimate government derives its powers from the consent of the governed – with what she regarded as the erosion of democratic norms under the current administration. But her argument extended beyond American politics. Humanists everywhere, she maintained, have a responsibility to defend institutions that protect equal human dignity, support independent inquiry, resist the persecution of minorities and ensure that people can participate meaningfully in the societies to which they belong. Such resistance is not simply opposition to particular political movements. It is a continuing commitment to the conditions that make human flourishing possible.

Yet Goldstein also recognised a difficulty with this approach. Defending established institutions can sound rather like defending the status quo, and that is not necessarily an inspiring message.

Humanism needs to offer something more.

“Authoritarian and religious nationalist movements can be remarkably effective at satisfying people’s need to belong, to feel significant and to participate in something larger than themselves.”

The need for belonging and inspiration

One of the most challenging observations in Goldstein’s address concerned the emotional appeal of the very movements she was criticising. Authoritarian and religious nationalist movements can be remarkably effective at satisfying people’s need to belong, to feel significant, and to participate in something larger than themselves. They offer powerful narratives of collective identity, purpose and destiny. Their appeal cannot be explained simply by ignorance or irrationality.

Goldstein acknowledged that humanism must find equally compelling ways of addressing these fundamental human needs, while remaining faithful to reason, evidence and universal human dignity.

Not everyone, she observed, is inspired by logical argument or the elegance of scientific explanation.

Humanists therefore need to draw upon the arts, storytelling and creativity to develop narratives that connect people with one another and with meaningful purposes. They should invite people into scientific, artistic, educational, civic and political projects through which their contributions can make a genuine difference.

This was a significant challenge to a movement that has often concentrated on defending rationality and secular institutions rather than cultivating the lived experience of community and belonging.

Goldstein offered no detailed organisational programme for achieving this transformation. Nevertheless, she identified a crucial difficulty: if humanism cannot satisfy the human longing for meaning and significance, other movements, including those hostile to humanist values, may prove more attractive.

The quiet resistance of everyday life

Goldstein concluded by bringing her philosophy down from the level of political institutions to the ordinary interactions of daily life. Resistance, she suggested, is not confined to public demonstrations, campaigns or political struggles. Every day, individuals make choices that either contribute to confusion, hostility and division or help cultivate understanding, kindness and cooperation. Humiliating an opponent, spreading outrage or abandoning conversation in favour of slogans can increase the disorder of our social world. Listening patiently, treating others with dignity, and seeking understanding can help sustain the fragile conditions in which human relationships flourish. These actions may be modest and largely unrecognised, but they are part of the continuous work of maintaining a humane society.

Hope without illusion

Goldstein ended with a passage from The Mattering Instinct, returning to the cosmic implications of entropy. According to current physical understanding, the universe may eventually reach a state of maximum entropy in which the processes sustaining stars, life and complexity have ceased. Nothing human beings create can be guaranteed to endure forever. But this does not make our efforts meaningless.

The value of human existence lies in what happens during the finite interval in which we are alive: whether people suffer or flourish, whether they experience cruelty or kindness, whether they are denied opportunities or enabled to realise their potential. Humanism requires no promise of eternal life or ultimate cosmic victory. It asks us to use our brief existence to expand the possibilities for flourishing, not only for humanity but for other living species and the planet itself.

This was what Goldstein called hope without illusion: not the expectation that everything will turn out well, but the conviction that our choices can make real differences to real lives. Her address offered a memorable philosophical interpretation of humanism as resistance to entropy, connecting the struggle of living organisms to survive with humanity’s efforts to create knowledge, justice, compassion and civilisation.

It also raised an important challenge for the humanist movement itself. If meaningful communities, such as democratic institutions, are counter-entropic achievements, they cannot be sustained by philosophical declarations alone. They require imagination, organisation, hospitality and continuous practical effort.

Goldstein persuasively identified the human longing for belonging and significance as a powerful force in contemporary society. Whether organised humanism can become as effective at meeting those needs as it has been at articulating its intellectual and ethical principles remains an open question.

Biography and the importance of Spinoza

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, an American philosopher, novelist and public intellectual, has held academic positions at Harvard, Columbia, New York University and Barnard College, among other institutions. She holds a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University and is the recipient of numerous honours, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year award in 2011, and the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama in 2015. Her latest book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, explores the fundamental human need for significance and recognition.

In her 2006 book Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Goldstein explores how Spinoza helped lay the philosophical foundations of the modern secular world by challenging religious authority and arguing that reason, rather than revelation, should guide our understanding of nature, morality and human flourishing. His defence of freedom of thought, religious tolerance and the separation of philosophy from theology helped pave the way for the Enlightenment and modern liberal democracy. Spinoza's Ethics was a revolutionary attempt to construct a system of morality through reason alone, using definitions, axioms and logical deductions modelled on Euclidean geometry. Rather than deriving moral rules from divine commandments, he sought to demonstrate how an understanding of human nature, our emotions and our place in the natural world could lead to freedom, happiness and flourishing.