The  rise  of  a  modernist  architecturerooted  in  the  machine  age  and  inscientific management has preoccupied numerous architectural historians andsocial scientists.I then explore in subsequent chapters the extent to which the explana-tory variables put forward in the literature help sort out the origins and spreadof modernism in different countries.Available explanations of architectural modernism make different assump-tions about the role of architecture in society, and result in different arguments(see table 3.1).Finally,  an-other  group  of  social  scientists  assumes  that  architecture  is  primarily  to  beseen as a profession that rests on a claim to some body of abstract knowledge.Modernism in architecture is supposed to be based on the worldview and tech-niques that stem from an engineering model, one that includes scientific man-agement as a key component.For many historians, architecture is primarily shaped by mate-rial  and  intellectual  conditions,  and  thus  modernism  in  architecture  needs  tobe seen as an outgrowth of machine-based industrialization, of the new forms,materials, techniques, and ideas of the industrial age.