Eli5: What is modernism and post-modernism?
In: 81
In general the two are simply chronological: modern means more recent than ancient and postmodern means after modern. While any number of social scientists or historians can give an authoritative answer, the truth is more nuanced than any such simplistic definitions.
Modernism is the philosophical idea that human reasoning is, could be, or should be, or can be and is improved by being, mathematical logic and computational, a premise founded by the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Although it didn’t really catch on as such until after the Renaissance, and led to the Enlightenment, the principle of modernism calls for focusing more on empiricism and science than religion and morality.
Postmodernism is the successor to modernism, which developed after Darwin discovered that the existence of humanity can be explained by natural rather than divine causes. The last excuse for classical Cartesian dualism evaporated and the *information processing theory of mind* became the prevailing dogma. The notion that since cellular neurological activity can be modeled mathematically then our conscious thoughts and reasoning are therefore mathematical is simply too irresistible, regardless of how much evidence is available to show that it is at best an oversimplification, and quite possibly completely erroneous. Certainly science is powerful and productive, as long as the pesky matters of emotion, language, art, and morality are not at issue, deprecated as “subjective” and therefore essentially imaginary. And so the postmodern age becomes the era of “post-truth”, as we see it today, with the attendant violence, corruption, and bigotry infecting our society and anxiety, depression, and suicide infesting our selves.
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