"Defining a 'historic transition' means understanding how the complex system of intellectual, social, and material structures formed that determined the transition from a certain 'universe' to a 'new universe,' where the old explanations were radically rethought. In this book, a group of historians with specializations ranging from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries and across political, religious, and social fields, attempt a reinterpretation of 'modernity' as the new 'Axial Age'"--Provided by publisher.