The explorations of mobility in this book are, for the most part, explorations of mobility in the last two hundred years in the Western world. Mobility seems self-evidently central to Western modernity. Indeed the word modern seems to evoke images of technological mobility—the car, the plane, the spaceship. It also signifies a world of increased movement of people on a global scale. Perhaps most importantly, though, it suggests a way of thinking in terms of mobility—a metaphysics of mobility that is distinct from what came before it.