A Layperson’s Guide to the Postmodern Era, 1900-2025: A fresh look at history, science, politics, economics and philosophy (Layperson's Guides to History and Philosophy in the West, 300-2025)
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A Layperson’s Guide to the Postmodern Era, 1900-2025: A fresh look at history, science, politics, economics and philosophy (Layperson's Guides to History and Philosophy in the West, 300-2025)
Sale price
$11.99
Regular price $14.99
This book is the third in a series that offers the layperson a simplified version of history, science, politics, and philosophy in the West from 300 CE to the present. It reviews key people and events and seeks to explain changes in our worldview, how we see the world as we do. It begins in 1900, the start of an era that overturned the accepted ideas of the Modern Era: Descartes, Locke, Newton, the Scientific, French, and Industrial Revolutions, and the world order. Accordingly, I’ve chosen to call this the Postmodern Era.
Like previous volumes, it connects science, history, politics, economics, and philosophy, and explains how people, discoveries, and events brought about the collapse of an old worldview and the birth of a new one. With so much material to cover, this book confines itself to ten sketches. Starting with the world of 1900, separate chapters cover physics (relativity and quantum), politics (World Wars I and II), economics (communism vs capitalism), industrial growth, and philosophy, and then describe the 1960s, the computer and genomic revolutions, and an assessment of today’s world of meritocracy which, contrary to its promise, seems to have brought only deepening inequality, polarization, and social tension.
The two cover images sum up these 125 years. The Zytglogge, the town clock of Bern, Switzerland, opposite the window of Albert Einstein’s office, stimulated his thoughts about time and distance. And a radiation-emitting black hole, now thought to be at the center of every galaxy and a key factor in the history of the universe.
If these topics interest you, this book will provide you with a quick and interesting review of the people, events, and ideas that are the foundations of our world.
Like previous volumes, it connects science, history, politics, economics, and philosophy, and explains how people, discoveries, and events brought about the collapse of an old worldview and the birth of a new one. With so much material to cover, this book confines itself to ten sketches. Starting with the world of 1900, separate chapters cover physics (relativity and quantum), politics (World Wars I and II), economics (communism vs capitalism), industrial growth, and philosophy, and then describe the 1960s, the computer and genomic revolutions, and an assessment of today’s world of meritocracy which, contrary to its promise, seems to have brought only deepening inequality, polarization, and social tension.
The two cover images sum up these 125 years. The Zytglogge, the town clock of Bern, Switzerland, opposite the window of Albert Einstein’s office, stimulated his thoughts about time and distance. And a radiation-emitting black hole, now thought to be at the center of every galaxy and a key factor in the history of the universe.
If these topics interest you, this book will provide you with a quick and interesting review of the people, events, and ideas that are the foundations of our world.