The Autumn of the Modern Ages: Preface

This is the first of a series of posts on the collapse of the Modern Ages. It uses as its starting point, John Lukacs' essay, At the End of an Age. It was originally envisioned as a fact article for ANALOG, but it became way too long for that. However, as TOF transcribed the final portions of these posts, he realized that he might be able to salvage one part of it: the Autumn of Modern Science for such an article, and so that is reserved from this series.

TOF also notices in Preview-view that there are whimsical font changes throughout which he has not been able to correct. Go figure.

The Autumn of the Modern Agesby Michael F. Flynn

“When the world was half a thousand years younger…” S o began Johan Huizinga’s portrait of the 15th century world: The Autumn of the Middle Ages. “Autumn,” because if the medieval world was fading, it “faded” in a burst of color and drama, and its passing was also a birth: The Renaissance. [JH]It wasn’t the first time the West had pulled off this re-birth thingie. When the world was half a thousand years younger still, Europe had once before been transformed – and more happily so, for the 10th century had seen, in the revival of commerce and town life, in a renewed thirst for knowledge, the fading of a genuinely desperate era. And five hundred years before that, in “the autumn of late antiquity,” people like Boëthius or St. Augustine would later rightly be styled the last of the Romans and the first of the medievals. [PB]. There is nothing magical about that 500-year interval, but… Another half millennium back and Caesar crosses the Rubicon and the decaying Republic ends in an Augustan rebirth bright enough that men fifteen centuries after found themselves blinded by its light. And a half-millennium forward of the Renaissance brings us to… Well, today. Thoroughly Modern Milieu The Series Begins Here, with links to subsequent parts