This chapter explores the emergence of the atomistic episteme and the modern world it emerged alongside. Beginning with the crises of the late Middle Ages, it moves through the Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Discovery, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. This is a period in which humanity comes to know itself as an active agent within an unfolding material universe, governed not by divine will but systematic laws—an apprehensible reality occupied by a malleable humanity. The epistemic shift is explored through the work of key figures such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith, whose diverse contributions helped establish the foundations of modern philosophy, science, politics and economics. The chapter also acknowledges the darker dimensions of this period, with a focus on how early modern power-knowledge facilitated the division, exploitation and extermination of vast swathes of humanity.