Other Modern Age

The term Modern Times is used by historians to describe the period of time immediately following what is known as the Early Modern Times. more...

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Early Modern Times lasted from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century.; Modern Times began in the end of the 18th century, continuing to the present.;

Other similar terms, such as Modern Period, Modern Age, or Modern Era, are also commonly used.

The European Renaissance (about 1420-1630) is an important transition period beginning between the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.

The movement known as "Postmodernism" (especially dominant from the 1960s to the early 1980s) is widely misunderstood, and there is scholarly disagreement about how to describe very recent history.

Characteristics

The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient world rests on a sense that the modern world is not just another era in history, but rather the result of a new type of change. This is usually conceived of as progress driven by deliberate human efforts to better their situation.

Advances in all areas of human activity -- politics, industry, society, economics, commerce, transport, communication, mechanization, automation, science, medicine, technology and culture -- appear to have transformed an Old World into the Modern or New World. In each case, the identification of a Revolutionary change can be used to demarcate the old and old-fashioned from the modern.

Much of the Modern world replaced the Biblically-oriented value system, the monarchical government system, and the feudal economic system, with new democratic and liberal ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology, sociology, and economics.

Politics

Controversially, Leo Strauss believed that modernism generally started with the first modern political writer, Niccolò Machiavelli. It is indeed interesting that in his works, all the elements of modernism are present:

The positive attitude towards change, and attempts to make progress in technology, economics and military power, despite the obvious dangers involved in revolutions of all types.; The positive attitude towards experimentation with new forms of democracy or republicanism combined with a disdain for medieval institutions.; A positive attitude towards larger states, despite an appreciation of the superiority of small communities in most respects.;

What is particularly interesting is the clarity with which an argument is made for this revolutionary approach, versus the approach of classical political thinking with which Machiavelli was clearly in great agreement. The revolution is needed, according to Machiavelli, because of unpleasant necessity which had reached a head in his time. All communities must take into account not only what is best for them in isolation, but also the threat of outsiders, concerning whom the most dangerous are often large imperialist states and/or innovators rather traditionalist. (For example gun powder was becoming widely used in the European military in his time.) In other words, according to Strauss' understanding, the first type of modernism was political, and concerned with the constant threat of an arms race. The famous modern concerns with economics and natural science, developed from this in following generations, especially under René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon.

Read more at Wikipedia.org