Postmodern view of modernity

Let me begin with a tautology. As modernity was defined in terms of characteristics of the “modern” societies, postmodernization was defined by postmodern literature. The postmodern literature defined modernity and postmodernity in a new way and distinguished one from the other. Yet, there is a certain specific sense in which modernism is defined in postmodernist writings. To follow Klamer (2001), there are following eight characteristics of modernism:

• Looking for the reality behind deceptive appearances.

• Looking for an “invariant structure of reality” behind the changing appearances.

• Desire for a formal, logical and mathematical theory based on a minimum number of axioms.

• Looking at the appearances mechanistically and a desire to predict, control and perfect the systems.

• Liberation from the past with the concern for action to have a desired future.

• Separation between expert and layperson, and a separation between academic and popular understanding.

• Application of science for creation of a perfect society.

• Search for universal truth, peace, a better world, or all the three.