Models, methodologies, and metaphors on the move

Abstract

Most of our contemporaries would agree that we live in a time of rapid and deep-going change. Globalization, the end of certainty, and post-modernity are three prominent catch-words describing our current condition. Many are concerned about declining political steering capacities, run-away financial markets, global warming, the biotechnological and micro-electronic revolu tions, to name just a few particularly prominent issues. While it is hard not to be impressed by the impact of these various processes unfolding before our eyes, we may be well advised to distrust our perceptions. After all, it belongs to the most salient, if not defining characteristics of modern societies that each generation witnesses a fundamental transformation and an upheaval unprecedented in dynamic and impact - a phenomenon that Fowles (1974) has aptly described as ‘chronocentrism’.