A Post-Modern Age

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point, not focused on a clear goal in the future but simply changing through forces outside our control. I will first describe how "Modernity" came about, and then to indicate some of the features for which "Post-Modernity" is meant to be a reaction, response or addition to modernization.

Beginnings of Modernity:

First, I aim to give a broad historical picture against which we may understand the rise of Modernity as an idea related to science and society or as a framework for a view of rationality. We know that we experience change as either progress or transition, that is, we view our historical situation and our lives presently as deriving meaning and value in some unrealized future.

The shift from Renaissance humanism to Modern rationalism can be understood in terms of four shifts: (1) from an oral culture in which the theory and practice of rhetoric played a central role to a written culture in which formal logic played a central role in establishing the ...

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During the period of the 1500's thru the 1900's the framework and presuppositions about Nature and Humanity were being progressively challenged and overturned by many scientific advances, until not one, or very little of their elements were accepted by reasonably educated people. European society was becoming known as traditional, hierarchical, corporate, and privileged. These features had characterized Europe and much of the rest of the world during these few centuries. Virtually every society on the globe by the opening of the eighteenth century could be characterized by social dependency�s and discrepancies between wealth and poverty. All of these societies also confronted the ...

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