What is Modernity So what is modernity? One way of describing it is to call it a period of history characterized by a complex set of industrial developments, including the he increasing concentration of people in towns and cities greater geographical mobility occasioned steam engines and railway networks and enormous popular faith in industrial and technological progress. This all took place sometime between the 1 6th and early 20th centuries. Modernity, in a nutshell, is the continuation of the Enlightenment project. One way of classifying it in broad terms is as the most recent of the three great eras of Western development, the other two being the classical era of the ancient Greeks and the medieval era. The modern era, from the deep perspective of the historian of human thought, began after the Renaissance, or possibly with the Enlightenment, or at any rate when ever ideas such as technological progress and the discovery of knowledge through reason and science began to undermine the authority of religionWhat is Modernity ◼ So what is modernity? One way of describing it is to call it a period of history characterized by a complex set of industrial developments, including the increasing concentration of people in towns and cities, greater geographical mobility occasioned by steam engines and railway networks, and enormous popular faith in industrial and technological progress. This all took place sometime between the 16th and early 20th centuries. ◼ Modernity, in a nutshell, is the continuation of the Enlightenment project. One way of classifying it in broad terms is as the most recent of the three great eras of Western development, the other two being the Classical era of the ancient Greeks and the medieval era. ◼ The modern era, from the deep perspective of the historian of human thought, began after the Renaissance, or possibly with the Enlightenment, or at any rate when ever ideas such as technological progress and the discovery of knowledge through reason and science began to undermine the authority of religion