Premoderns placed their trust in authority. Moderns lost their confidence in authority and placed it in human reason instead. Postmoderns kept the modern distrust of authority but lost their trust in reason and have found nothing to replace it. This is the crux of all postmodern thought. What happened? In some respects, the modern faith has panned out, and reason has delivered the goods. Scientific and technological progress are not only rapid but accelerating: we have visited the moon, and we all