1. in philosophy, a set of general characteristics marking the whole period from the 17th century to the present day. Most historians of philosophy see the onset of modernity in the work of René Descartes, with its attempt to establish a systematic account of reality on a radically new basis (see Cartesianism; Cartesian dualism; Cartesian self). Historically, modernism is inseparable from the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries and its complex legacy over the past 300 years. Its defining characteristics include a sense that religious dogma and classical metaphysics can no longer provide a sure foundation in intellectual matters and a quest for certain knowledge from other sources; the latter is sustained by confidence in absolutes in epistemology and ethics and confidence in the new methods of experimental philosophy, or natural science. Traditional psychology can be seen to be the product of modernism to the extent that it is characterized by faith in scientific method, pursuit of control and prediction of behavior, explanation in terms of laws and principles, and the assumption that human behavior is ultimately rational as opposed to irrational. Some thinkers argue that modernism was superseded by postmodernism in the late 20th century, although others would dispute such a claim.

2. a movement in the arts of the early 20th century characterized by the adoption of radically new techniques, forms, approaches, and subjects. Important developments associated with modernism include abstraction in the visual arts, free verse in poetry, and use of the 12-tone scale in music. Many writers and artists of the period were influenced by contemporary developments in psychology and psychoanalysis; a particular instance of this is the use of the stream of consciousness technique by novelists and poets, such as Irish writer James Joyce (1882–1941), British writer Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), French writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922), and others. For more than a half century now, the concept of postmodernism in the arts has been much discussed. —modernist adj., n.