Getting Modern

Cato Unbound presents some provocative essays, starting with:

• Stephen Davies on how the world got modern; followed by
• Jack Goldstone with how an engineering culture launched modernity, with a reaction by
• Anthony Pagden, who asks "Have we ever been modern?"
  
• An excerpt from Goldstone: This was a radical departure from the belief of almost all civilizations (including that of the classical and medieval West) that humanity’s golden age lay in the past. Instead the new engineering culture proclaimed that an earthly paradise lay in man’s future, and that it would be brought about by mankind’s own progress in developing and applying new scientific knowledge rather than by divine redemption.