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Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompasses the social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories. A broad concept, "Western culture" does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines. It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that expanded across the Mediterranean basin and Europe, and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization.
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Historically, scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco-Roman antiquity. However, scholars also acknowledge that other cultures, like Ancient Egypt, the Phoenician city-states, and several Near-Eastern cultures stimulated and influenced it. The Hellenistic period also promoted syncretism, blending Greek, Roman, and Jewish cultures. Major advances in literature, engineering, and science shaped the Hellenistic Jewish culture from which the earliest Christians and the Greek New Testament emerged. The eventual Christianization of Europe in late-antiquity would ensure that Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, remained a dominant force in Western culture for many centuries to follow.
Western culture continued to develop during the Middle Ages as reforms triggered by the medieval renaissances, the influence of the Islamic world via Al-Andalus and Sicily (including the transfer of technology from the East, and Latin translations of Arabic texts on science and philosophy by Greek and Hellenic-influenced Islamic philosophers), and the Italian Renaissance as Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople brought ancient Greek and Roman texts back to central and western Europe.Medieval Christianity is credited with creating the modern university, the modern hospital system, scientific economics, and natural law (which would later influence the creation of international law). European culture developed a complex range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism, mysticism and Christian and secular humanism, setting the stage for the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which fundamentally altered religious and political life. Led by figures like Martin Luther, Protestantism challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and promoted ideas of individual freedom and religious reform, paving the way for modern notions of personal responsibility and governance.
The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries shifted focus to reason, science, and individual rights, influencing revolutions across Europe and the Americas and the development of modern democratic institutions. Enlightenment thinkers advanced ideals of political pluralism and empirical inquiry, which, together with the Industrial Revolution, transformed Western society. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the influence of Enlightenment rationalism continued with the rise of secularism and liberal democracy, while the Industrial Revolution fueled economic and technological growth. The expansion of rights movements and the decline of religious authority marked significant cultural shifts. Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the concept of political pluralism, individualism, prominent subcultures or countercultures, and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and immigration.
Terminology
The West as a geographical area is unclear and undefined. There is some disagreement about which nations should or should not be included in the category, when, and why. Certainly related conceptual terminology has changed over time in scope, meaning, and use. The term "western" draws on an affiliation with, or a perception of, a shared philosophy, worldview, political, and religious heritage grounded in the Greco-Roman world, the legacy of the Roman Empire, and medieval concepts of Christendom. For example, whether the Eastern Roman Empire (anachronistically/controversially referred to as the Byzantine Empire), or those countries heavily influenced by its legacy, should be counted as "Western" is an example of the possible ambiguity of the term. These questions[which?] can be traced back to the affiliation between the culture of ancient Rome and that of Classical Greece, a persistent Greek East and Latin West language-split within the Roman Empire, and an eventual permanent splitting of the Roman Empire in 395 into Western and Eastern halves. And perhaps, at its worst,[citation needed] culminating in Pope Leo III's transfer of the Roman Empire from the Eastern Roman Empire to the Frankish King Charlemagne in the form of the Holy Roman Empire in 800, the Great Schism of 1054, and the devastating Fourth Crusade of 1204.
Conversely, traditions of scholarship around Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid had been forgotten in the Catholic west and were rediscovered by Italians from scholars fleeing the 1453 fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. The subsequent Renaissance, a conscious effort by Europeans to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of the Greco-Roman world, eventually encouraged the Age of Discovery, the Scientific Revolution, Age of Enlightenment, and the subsequent Industrial Revolution. Similarly, complicated relationships between virtually all the countries and regions within a broadly defined "West" can be discussed in the light of a persistently fragmented political landscape resulting in a lack of uniformity and significant diversity between the various cultures affiliating with this shared socio-cultural heritage. Thus, those cultures identifying with the West and with what it means to be "western" change over time as the geopolitical circumstances of a place changes and what is meant by the terminology changes.
It is difficult to determine which individuals or places or trends fit into which category, and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary.[page needed] Globalization has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all modern cultures are, to some extent, influenced by aspects of Western culture. Stereotypical views of "the West" have been labeled "Occidentalism", paralleling "Orientalism"—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of "the East".
Some philosophers have questioned whether Western culture can be considered a historically sound, unified body of thought. For example, Kwame Anthony Appiah pointed out in 2016 that many of the fundamental influences on Western culture – such as those of Greek philosophy – are also shared by the Islamic world to a certain extent.[need quotation to verify] Appiah argues that the origin of the Western and European identity can be traced back to the 8th-century Muslim invasion of Europe via Iberia, when Christians would start to form a common Christian or European identity.[need quotation to verify] Contemporary Latin chronicles from Spain referred to the victors in the Frankish victory over the Umayyads at the 732 Battle of Tours as "Europeans" according to Appiah, denoting a shared sense of identity.
A former, now less-acceptable synonym for "Western civilisation" was "the white race".
As Europeans discovered the extra-European world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly been considered the Orient ("the East") became the Near East as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time in the 19th century. Thus the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the "Far East" while troubles surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire occurred simultaneously in the Near East. The term "Middle East" in the mid-19th century included the territory east of the Ottoman Empire but west of China—Greater Persia and Greater India—but is now used synonymously with "Near East" in most languages.
History
The earliest civilizations which influenced the development of Western culture were those of Mesopotamia; the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran: the cradle of civilization.Ancient Egypt similarly had a strong influence on Western culture.
Phoenician mercantilism and the introduction of the Alphabetic script boosted state formation in the Aegean and current-day Italy and current-day Spain, spawning civilizations in the Mediterranean such as Ancient Carthage, Ancient Greece, Etruria, and Ancient Rome.
The Greeks contrasted themselves with both their Eastern neighbours (such as the Trojans in Iliad) as well as their Northern neighbours (who they considered barbarians).[citation needed] Concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the West were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire. What is thought of as Western thought today originates primarily from Greco-Roman and Christian traditions, with varying degrees of influence from the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic peoples, and includes the ideals of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment.
The West of the Mediterranean Region during the Antiquity
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During the Greco-Roman world, North Africa and the Western regions of the Middle East were integral parts of the Western civilization, due to Hellenization and the direct cultural impact of the conquests of the Roman Empire. After the Roman conquests, the whole Mediterranean become essentially a Roman inland sea.
While the concept of a "West" did not exist until the emergence of the Roman Republic, the roots of the concept can be traced back to Ancient Greece. Since Homeric literature (the Trojan Wars), through the accounts of the Persian Wars of Greeks against Persians by Herodotus, and right up until the time of Alexander the Great, there was a paradigm of a contrast between Greeks and other civilizations. Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves (in the formulation of Aristotle) as something between the advanced civilizations of the Near East (who they viewed as soft and slavish) and the wild barbarians of most of Europe to the north. During this period writers like Herodotus and Xenophon would highlight the importance of freedom in the Ancient Greek world, as opposed to the perceived slavery of the so-called barbaric world.
Alexander's conquests led to the emergence of a Hellenistic civilization, representing a synthesis of Greek and Near-Eastern cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The Near-Eastern civilizations of Ancient Egypt and the Levant, which came under Greek rule, became part of the Hellenistic world. The most important Hellenistic centre of learning was Ptolemaic Egypt, which attracted Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Persian, Phoenician and even Indian scholars. Hellenistic science, philosophy, architecture, literature and art later provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Europe and the Mediterranean world, including the Hellenistic world in its conquests in the 1st century BCE.
Following the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world, the concept of a "West" arose, as there was a cultural divide between the Greek East and Latin West. The Latin-speaking Western Roman Empire consisted of Western Europe and Northwest Africa, while the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire consisted of the Balkans, Asia Minor, Egypt and Levant. The "Greek" East was generally wealthier and more advanced than the "Latin" West.[citation needed] With the exception of Italia, the wealthiest provinces of the Roman Empire were in the East, particularly Roman Egypt which was the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italia. Nevertheless, the Celts in the West created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity (an example being the poet Caecilius Statius), and they developed a large amount of scientific knowledge themselves (as seen in their Coligny Calendar).
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For about five hundred years, the Roman Empire maintained the Greek East and consolidated a Latin West, but an east–west division remained, reflected in many cultural norms of the two areas, including language. Eventually, the empire became increasingly split into a Western and Eastern part, reviving old ideas of a contrast between an advanced East, and a rugged West.
From the time of Alexander the Great (the Hellenistic period), Greek civilization came in contact with Jewish civilization. Christianity would eventually emerge from the syncretism of Hellenic culture, Roman culture, and Second Temple Judaism, gradually spreading across the Roman Empire and eclipsing its antecedents and influences.
The Greek and Roman paganism was gradually replaced by Christianity, first with its legalisation with the Edict of Milan and then the Edict of Thessalonica which made it the State church of the Roman Empire. Catholic Christianity, served as a unifying force in Christian parts of Europe, and in some respects replaced or competed with the secular authorities. The Jewish Christian tradition out of which it had emerged was all but extinguished, and antisemitism became increasingly entrenched or even integral to Christendom. Much of art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church.
In a broader sense, the Middle Ages, with its fertile encounter between Greek philosophical reasoning and Levantine monotheism was not confined to the West but also stretched into the old East. The philosophy and science of Classical Greece were largely forgotten in Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, other than in isolated monastic enclaves (notably in Ireland, which had become Christian but was never conquered by Rome). The learning of Classical Antiquity was better preserved in the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis Roman civil law code was created in the East in his capital of Constantinople, and that city maintained trade and intermittent political control over outposts such as Venice in the West for centuries. Classical Greek learning was also subsumed, preserved, and elaborated in the rising Eastern world, which gradually supplanted Roman-Byzantine control as a dominant cultural-political force. Thus, much of the learning of classical antiquity was slowly reintroduced to European civilization in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
The birth of European West during the Middle Ages
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After the fall of Rome, much of Greco-Roman art, literature, science and even technology were all but lost in the western part of the old empire. However, this would become the center of a new West. Europe fell into political anarchy, with many warring kingdoms and principalities. Under the Frankish kings, it eventually, and partially, reunified, and the anarchy evolved into feudalism.
The Medieval West referred specifically to the Catholic "Latin" West, also called "Frankish" during Charlemagne's reign, in contrast to the Orthodox East, where Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest recorded concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simply a geographic term) was formed by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century during the Carolingian Renaissance, limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time. "European" as a cultural term did not include much of the territories where the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century.
Much of the basis of the post-Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, mainly through the integration and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought. The Eastern Orthodox Church founded many cathedrals, monasteries and seminaries, some of which continue to exist today.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, many of the classical Greek texts were translated into Arabic and preserved in the medieval Islamic world. The Greek classics along with Arabic science, philosophy and technology were transmitted to Western Europe and translated into Latin, sparking the Renaissance of the 12th century and 13th century.
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Medieval Christianity is credited with creating the first modern universities. The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria and Greek healing temples. These hospitals were established to cater to "particular social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age," according to the historian of hospitals, Guenter Risse. Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and polygamy.Francisco de Vitoria, a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives, is recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law, and now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light for the West's democracy and rapid economic development.Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, referring to the Scholastics, wrote, "it is they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the 'founders' of scientific economics."
The rediscovery of the Justinian Code in Western Europe early in the 10th century rekindled a passion for the discipline of law, which crossed many of the re-forming boundaries between East and West. In the Catholic or Frankish west, Roman law became the foundation on which all legal concepts and systems were based. Its influence is found in all Western legal systems, although in different manners and to different extents. The study of canon law, the legal system of the Catholic Church, fused with that of Roman law to form the basis of the refounding of Western legal scholarship.
From Late Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and onwards, while Eastern Europe was shaped by the Eastern Orthodox Church, Southern and Central Europe were increasingly stabilized by the Catholic Church which, as Roman imperial governance faded from view, was the only consistent force in Western Europe. In 1054 came the Great Schism that, following the Greek East and Latin West divide, separated Europe into religious and cultural regions present to this day.
Later Middle Ages (Rome and Reformation)
In the 14th century, the Renaissance starting from Italy and then spreading throughout Europe, there was a massive artistic, architectural, scientific and philosophical revival, as a result of the Christian revival of Greek philosophy, and the long Christian medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities. This period is commonly referred to as the Renaissance. In the following century, this process was further enhanced by an exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian cities such as Florence and Venice after the end of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople.
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Until the Age of Enlightenment,Christian culture took over as the predominant force in Western civilization, guiding the course of philosophy, art, and science for many years. Movements in art and philosophy, such as the Humanist movement of the Renaissance and the Scholastic movement of the High Middle Ages, were motivated by a drive to connect Catholicism with Greek and Arab thought imported by Christian pilgrims. However, due to the division in Western Christianity caused by the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, religious influence—especially the temporal power of the Pope—began to wane.
During the Reformation and Enlightenment, the ideas of civil rights, equality before the law, procedural justice, and democracy as the ideal form of society began to be institutionalized as principles forming the basis of modern Western culture, particularly in Protestant regions.
Expansion of the West: the Era of Colonialism (15th–20th centuries)
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Early modern era
From the late 15th century to the 17th century, Western culture began to spread to other parts of the world through explorers and missionaries during the Age of Discovery, and by imperialists from the 17th century to the early 20th century. During the Great Divergence, a term coined by Samuel Huntington the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization of the time, eclipsing Qing China, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. The process was accompanied and reinforced by the Age of Discovery and continued into the modern period. Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including lack of government intervention, geography, colonialism, and customary traditions.
The Age of Discovery faded into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, during which cultural and intellectual forces in European society emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority. It challenged the authority of institutions that were deeply rooted in society, such as the Catholic Church; there was much talk of ways to reform society with toleration, science and skepticism.
Philosophers of the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, who influenced society by publishing widely read works. Upon learning about enlightened views, some rulers met with intellectuals and tried to apply their reforms, such as allowing for toleration, or accepting multiple religions, in what became known as enlightened absolutism. New ideas and beliefs spread around Europe and were fostered by an increase in literacy due to a departure from solely religious texts. Publications include Encyclopédie (1751–72) that was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary, 1764) and Letters on the English (1733) written by Voltaire spread the ideals of the Enlightenment.
Coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment was the scientific revolution, spearheaded by Newton. This included the emergence of modern science, during which developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed views of society and nature.[excessive citations] While its dates are disputed, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution, and its completion is attributed to the "grand synthesis" of Newton's 1687 Principia.
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, and the development of machine tools. These transitions began in Great Britain and spread to Western Europe and North America within a few decades.
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The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals, plants and fire.
The First Industrial Revolution evolved into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition years between 1840 and 1870, when technological and economic progress continued with the increasing adoption of steam transport (steam-powered railways, boats, and ships), the large-scale manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in steam-powered factories.
Post-Industrial era
Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the concept of political pluralism, individualism, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements) and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and immigration. Western culture has been heavily influenced by the Renaissance, the Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment and the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions.
In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, mostly in the European Union where some member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years, and also elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics and science) increased. Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world, where 70% are Christians.
The West went through a series of great cultural and social changes between 1945 and 1980. The emergent mass media (film, radio, television and recorded music) created a global culture that could ignore national frontiers. Literacy became almost universal, encouraging the growth of books, magazines and newspapers. The influence of cinema and radio remained, while televisions became near essentials in every home.
By the mid-20th century, Western culture was exported worldwide, and the development and growth of international transport and telecommunication (such as transatlantic cable and the radiotelephone) played a decisive role in modern globalization. The West has contributed a great many technological, political, philosophical, artistic and religious aspects to modern international culture: having been a crucible of Catholicism, Protestantism, democracy, industrialisation; the first major civilisation to seek to abolish slavery during the 19th century, the first to enfranchise women (beginning in Australasia at the end of the 19th century) and the first to put to use such technologies as steam, electric and nuclear power. The West invented cinema, television, the personal computer, the Internet and video games; developed sports such as soccer, cricket, golf, tennis, rugby, basketball, and volleyball; and transported humans to an astronomical object for the first time with the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Arts and humanities
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While dance, music, visual art, story-telling, and architecture are human universals, they are expressed in the West in certain characteristic ways.
Music
In music, Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church, and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages. This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music and its many derivatives. The Baroque style, which encompassed music, art, and architecture, was particularly encouraged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional, intended to stimulate religious fervor.
The symphony, concerto, sonata, opera, and oratorio have their origins in Italy. Many musical instruments developed in the West have come to see widespread use all over the world; among them are the guitar, violin, piano, pipe organ, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, accordion, and the theremin. In turn, it has been claimed that some European instruments have roots in earlier Eastern instruments that were adopted from the medieval Islamic world. The solo piano, symphony orchestra, and the string quartet are also significant musical innovations of the West.
- Claudio Monteverdi, 1567–1643
- Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, 1678–1741
- George Frideric Handel, 1685–1759
- Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685–1750
- Franz Joseph Haydn, 1732–1809
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756–1791
- Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770–1827
- Frédéric François Chopin, 1810–1849
- Franz Liszt, 1811–1886
Painting and photography
Jan van Eyck, among other renaissance painters, made great advances in oil painting, and perspective drawings and paintings had their earliest practitioners in Florence. In art, the Celtic knot is a very distinctive Western repeated motif. Depictions of the nude human male and female in photography, painting, and sculpture are frequently considered to have special artistic merit. Realistic portraiture is especially valued.
Photography and the motion picture as both a technology and basis for entirely new art forms were also developed in the West.
- Restoration of a fresco from an Ancient Roman villa bedroom, circa 50–40 BC, dimensions of the room: 265.4 × 334 × 583.9 cm, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
- Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503 – 1506, perhaps continuing until circa 1517, oil on poplar panel, 77 cm × 53 cm, Louvre (Paris)
- Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, 1656, oil on canvas, 318 cm × 276 cm, El Prado (Madrid)
- Dance at Le moulin de la Galette, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876, oil on canvas, height: 131 cm, Musée d'Orsay (Paris)
- Photo of the interior of the apartment of Eugène Atget, taken in 1910 in Paris
- Rêverie, by Alphonse Mucha, poster for the publishing house Champenois (1897)
Dance and performing arts
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The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance. The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite. The polka, the square dance, the flamenco, and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance.
Greek and Roman theatre are considered the antecedents of modern theatre, and forms such as medieval theatre, Passion Plays, morality plays, and commedia dell'arte are considered highly influential. Elizabethan theatre, with playwrights including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, is considered one of the most formative and important eras for modern drama.
The soap opera, a popular culture dramatic form, originated in the United States first on radio in the 1930s, then a couple of decades later on television. The music video was also developed in the West in the middle of the 20th century. Musical theatre was developed in the West in the 19th and 20th Centuries, from music hall, comic opera, and Vaudeville; with significant contributions from the Jewish diaspora, African-Americans, and other marginalized peoples.
Literature
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Western literature encompasses the literary traditions of Europe, as well as North America, Oceania and Latin America.
While epic literary works in verse such as the Mahabharata and Homer's Iliad are ancient and occurred worldwide, the prose novel as a distinct form of storytelling, with developed, consistent human characters and, typically, some connected overall plot (although both of these characteristics have sometimes been modified and played with in later times), was popularized by the West in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of course, extended prose fiction had existed much earlier; both novels of adventure and romance in the Hellenistic world and in Heian Japan. Both Petronius' Satyricon (c. 60 CE) and the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 1000 CE) have been cited as the world's first major novel but they had a very limited long-term impact on literary writing beyond their own day until much more recent times.
The novel, which made its appearance in the 18th century, is an essentially European creation. Chinese and Japanese literature contain some works that may be thought of as novels, but only the European novel is couched in terms of a personal analysis of personal dilemmas.
As in its artistic tradition, European literature pays deep tribute to human suffering.Tragedy, from its ritually and mythologically inspired Greek origins to modern forms where struggle and downfall are often rooted in psychological or social, rather than mythical, motives, is also widely considered a specifically European creation and can be seen as a forerunner of some aspects of both the novel and of classical opera.
The validity of reason was postulated in both Christian philosophy and the Greco-Roman classics. Christianity laid a stress on the inward aspects of actions and on motives, notions that were foreign to the ancient world. This subjectivity, which grew out of the Christian belief that man could achieve a personal union with God, resisted all challenges and made itself the fulcrum on which all literary exposition turned, including the 20th–21st century novels.
Architecture
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Important Western architectural motifs include the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic orders of Greek architecture, and the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Victorian styles, which are still widely recognized and used in contemporary Western architecture. Much of Western architecture emphasizes repetition of simple motifs, straight lines and expansive, undecorated planes. A modern ubiquitous architectural form that emphasizes this characteristic is the skyscraper, their modern equivalent first developed in New York and Chicago. The predecessor of the skyscraper can be found in the medieval towers erected in Bologna.
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- The facade of Angoulême Cathedral was built between 1110 and 1128 in the Romanesque style.
- Stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, completed in 1248, mostly constructed between 1194 and 1220 in the Gothic style
- The Palazzo Farnese, in Rome, built from 1534 to 1545, was designed by Sangallo and Michelangelo and is an important example of renaissance architecture.
- The Palais Garnier in Paris, built between 1861 and 1875, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece
Cuisine
Western foodways were, until recently, considered to have their roots in the cuisines of Classical Rome and Greece, but the influence of Arab and Near Eastern cuisine on the West has become a topic of research in recent decades. The Crusaders, known mostly for fighting over holy land, settled in the Levant and acclimated to the local culture and cuisine. Fulcher of Chartres said "For we who were occidentals have now become orientals." These cultural experiences, carried back to France by notables like Eleanor of Aquitaine influenced Western European foodways. Many Oriental ingredients were relatively new to the Western lands. Sugar, almonds, pistachios, rosewater, and dried citrus fruits were all novelties to the Crusaders who encountered them in Saracen lands. Pepper, ginger and cinnamon were the most widely used spices of the European courts and noble households. By the end of the Middle Ages, cloves, nutmeg, mastic, galingale, and other imported spices had become part of the Western cuisine.
Saracen influence can be seen in medieval cookbooks. Some recipes retain their Arabic names in Italian translations of the Liber de Coquina. Known as bruet Sarassinois in the cuisine of North France, the concept of sweet and sour sauce is attested to in Greek tradition when Anthimus finishes his stew with vinegar and honey. Saracens combined sweet ingredients like date-juice and honey with pomegranate, lemons and citrus juices, or other sour ingredients. The technique of browning pieces of meat and simmering in liquid with vegetables is used in many recipes from the Baghdad cookery book. The same technique appears in the late-13th century Viandier. Fried pieces of beef simmered in wine with sugar and cloves was called bruet of Sarcynesse in English.
Scientific and technological inventions and discoveries
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A notable feature of Western culture is its strong emphasis and focus on innovation and invention through science and technology, and its ability to generate new processes, materials and material artifacts with its roots dating back to the Ancient Greeks. The scientific method as "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses" was fashioned by the 17th-century Italian Galileo Galilei, with roots in the work of medieval scholars such as the 11th-century Iraqi physicist Ibn al-Haytham and the 13th-century English friar Roger Bacon.
By the will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel the Nobel Prizes were established in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. The percentage of ethnically European Nobel prize winners during the first and second halves of the 20th century were respectively 98 and 94 percent.
The West is credited with the development of the steam engine and adapting its use into factories, and for the generation of electric power. The electrical motor, dynamo, transformer, electric light, and most of the familiar electrical appliances, were inventions of the West. The Otto and the Diesel internal combustion engines are products whose genesis and early development were in the West.Nuclear power stations are derived from the first atomic pile constructed in Chicago in 1942.
Communication devices and systems including the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, communications and navigation satellites, mobile phone, and the Internet were all invented by Westerners. The pencil, ballpoint pen, Cathode ray tube, liquid-crystal display, light-emitting diode, camera, photocopier, laser printer, ink jet printer, plasma display screen and World Wide Web were also invented in the West.
Ubiquitous materials including aluminum, clear glass, synthetic rubber, synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene were discovered and developed or invented in the West. Iron and steel ships, bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the West. Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were invented by Westerners. Most of the elements were discovered and named in the West, as well as the contemporary atomic theories to explain them.
The transistor, integrated circuit, memory chip, first programming language and computer were all first seen in the West. The ship's chronometer, the screw propeller, the locomotive, bicycle, automobile, and airplane were all invented in the West. Eyeglasses, the telescope, the microscope and electron microscope, all the varieties of chromatography, protein and DNA sequencing, computerised tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance, x-rays, and light, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy, were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories, hospitals and factories.[citation needed]
In medicine, the pure antibiotics were created in the West. The method of preventing Rh disease, the treatment of diabetes, and the germ theory of disease were discovered by Westerners. The eradication of smallpox, was led by a Westerner, Donald Henderson. Radiography, computed tomography, positron emission tomography and medical ultrasonography are important diagnostic tools developed in the West. Other important diagnostic tools of clinical chemistry, including the methods of spectrophotometry, electrophoresis and immunoassay, were first devised by Westerners. So were the stethoscope, the electrocardiograph, and the endoscope. Vitamins, hormonal contraception, hormones, insulin, beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, along with a host of other medically proven drugs, were first used to treat disease in the West. The double-blind study and evidence-based medicine are critical scientific techniques widely used in the West for medical purposes.[citation needed]
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In mathematics, calculus, statistics, logic, vectors, tensors and complex analysis, group theory, abstract algebra and topology were developed by Westerners. In biology, evolution, chromosomes, DNA, genetics and the methods of molecular biology are creations of the West. In physics, the science of mechanics and quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics were all developed by Westerners. The discoveries and inventions by Westerners in electromagnetism include Coulomb's law (1785), the first battery (1800), the unity of electricity and magnetism (1820), Biot–Savart law (1820), Ohm's law (1827), and Maxwell's equations (1871). The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners.[citation needed]
The world's most widely adopted system of measurement, the International System of Units, derived from the metric system, was first developed in France and evolved through contributions from various Westerners.
In business, economics, and finance, double entry bookkeeping, credit cards, and the charge card were all first used in the West.
Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and outer space. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth (1522) was by Westerners, as well as the first journey to the South Pole (1911), and the first Moon landing (1969). The landing of robots on Mars (2004 and 2012) and on an asteroid (2001), the Voyager 2 explorations of the outer planets (Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989), Voyager 1's passage into interstellar space (2013), and New Horizons' flyby of Pluto (2015) were significant recent Western achievements.
Media
The roots of modern-day Western mass media can be traced back to the late 15th century, when printing presses began to operate throughout wealthy European cities. The emergence of news media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press, from which the publishing press derives its name.
In the 16th century, a decrease in the preeminence of Latin in its literary use, along with the impact of economic change, the discoveries arising from trade and travel, navigation to the New World, science and arts and the development of increasingly rapid communications through print led to a rising corpus of vernacular media content in European society.
After the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957, satellite transmission technology was dramatically realised, with the United States launching Telstar in 1962 linking live media broadcasts from the UK to the US. The first digital broadcast satellite (DBS) system began transmitting in US in 1975.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Internet has contributed to a tremendous increase in the accessibility of Western media content. Departing from media offered in bundled content packages (magazines, CDs, television and radio slots), the Internet has primarily offered unbundled content items (articles, audio and video files).
Religion
The native religions of Europe were polytheistic but not homogenous – however, they were similar insofar as they were predominantly Indo-European in origin. Roman religion was similar to but not the same as Hellenic religion – likewise for indigenous Germanic polytheism, Celtic polytheism and Slavic polytheism. Before this time many Europeans from the north, especially Scandinavians, remained polytheistic, though southern Europe was predominantly Christian from the 5th century onwards.
Western culture at a fundamental level is influenced by the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions. These cultures had a number of similarities, such as a common emphasis on the individual, but they also embody fundamentally conflicting worldviews. For example, in Judaism and Christianity, God is the ultimate authority, while Greco-Roman tradition considers the ultimate authority to be reason. Christian attempts to reconcile these frameworks were responsible for the preservation of Greek philosophy. Historically, Europe has been the center and cradle of Christian civilization.
According to a survey by Pew Research Center from 2011, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world where 70–84% are Christians, According to this survey, 76% of Europeans described themselves as Christians, and about 86% of the Americas' population identified themselves as Christians, (90% in Latin America and 77% in North America). 73% in Oceania self-identify as Christian, and 76% in South Africa are Christian.
Eurobarometer polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2012 found that Christianity was the largest religion in the European Union, accounting for 72% of the population.Catholics are the largest Christian group, accounting for 48%, while Protestants make up 12%, Eastern Orthodox make up 8% and other Christians make up 4% of the population respectively. In addition, Non-believers/Agnostics account for 16%,atheists account for 7%, and Muslims account for 2% of the population repectively. According to Scholars, in 2017, Europe's population was 77.8% Christian (up from 74.9% 1970), these changes were largely largely ascribed to the collapse of Communism and switching to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries.
At the same time, there has been an increase in the share of agnostic or atheist residents in Europe that accounted for 18% of the European population in 2012. In particular, over half of the population of the Czech Republic (79%) was agnostic, atheist or irreligious, compared to the United Kingdom (52%), Germany (25–33%),France (30–35%) and the Netherlands (39–44%).
As in other areas, the Jewish diaspora and Judaism exist in the Western world.
There are also small but increasing numbers of people across the Western world who seek to revive the indigenous religions of their European ancestors; such groups include Germanic, Roman, Hellenic, Celtic, Slavic, and polytheistic reconstructionist movements. Likewise, Wicca, New Age spirituality and other neo-pagan belief systems enjoy notable minority support in Western states.
Sport
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Since classical antiquity, sport has been an important facet of Western cultural expression.
A wide range of sports was already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably. Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games, which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic movement. The first modern Olympic games were held at Athens in 1896.
The Romans built immense structures such as the amphitheatres to house their festivals of sport. The Romans exhibited a passion for blood sports, such as the infamous Gladiatorial battles that pitted contestants against one another in a fight to the death. The Olympic Games revived many of the sports of classical antiquity—such as Greco-Roman wrestling, discus and javelin. The sport of bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France, and some Latin American countries. It traces its roots to prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice and is often linked to Rome, where many human-versus-animal events were held. Bullfighting spread from Spain to its American colonies, and in the 19th century to France, where it developed into a distinctive form in its own right.
Jousting and hunting were popular sports in the European Middle Ages, and the aristocratic classes developed passions for leisure activities. A great number of popular global sports were first developed or codified in Europe. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II's banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery.
The Industrial Revolution that began in Great Britain in the 18th century brought increased leisure time, leading to more opportunities for citizens to participate in athletic activities and also follow spectator sports. These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in the United Kingdom during the 19th century and obtained global prominence; these include ping pong, modern tennis, association football, netball and rugby.
Football (or soccer) remains hugely popular in Europe, but has grown from its origins to be known as the world game. Similarly, sports such as cricket, rugby, and netball were exported around the world, particularly among countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, thus India and Australia are among the strongest cricketing states, while victory in the Rugby World Cup has been shared among New Zealand, Australia, England, and South Africa.
Australian Rules Football, an Australian variation of football with similarities to Gaelic football and rugby, evolved in the British colony of Victoria in the mid-19th century. The United States also developed unique variations of English sports. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Many games are known as "football" were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, the "Father of American football". Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States. Volleyball was created in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a city directly north of Springfield, in 1895.
Themes and traditions
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Western culture has developed many themes and traditions, the most significant of which are:[citation needed]
- Greco-Roman classic letters, arts, architecture, philosophical and cultural tradition, which include the influence of preeminent authors and philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, as well as a long mythologic tradition.
- Christian ethical, philosophical, and mythological tradition, stemming largely from the Christian Bible, particularly the New Testament Gospels.
- Monasteries, schools, libraries, books, book making, universities, teaching, education, and lecture halls.
- A tradition of the importance of the rule of law.
- Secular humanism, rationalism and Enlightenment thought. This set the basis for a new critical attitude and open questioning of religion, favouring freethinking and questioning of the church as an authority, which resulted in open-minded and reformist ideals inside, such as liberation theology, which partly adopted these currents, and secular and political tendencies such as separation of church and state (sometimes termed laicism), agnosticism and atheism.
- Generalized usage of some form of the Latin or Greek alphabet, and derived forms, such as Cyrillic, used by those southern and eastern Slavic countries of Christian Orthodox tradition, historically under the Byzantine Empire and later within the Russian czarist or the Soviet area of influence. Other variants of the Latin or Greek alphabets are found in the Gothic and Coptic alphabets, which historically superseded older scripts, such as runes, and the Egyptian Demotic and Hieroglyphic systems.
- Natural law, human rights, constitutionalism, parliamentarism (or presidentialism) and formal liberal democracy in recent times—prior to the 19th century, most Western governments were still monarchies.
- A large influence, in modern times, of many of the ideals and values developed and inherited from Romanticism.
- An emphasis on, and use of, science as a means of understanding the natural world and humanity's place in it.
- More pronounced use and application of innovation and scientific developments, as well as a more rational approach to scientific progress (what has been known as the scientific method).
See also
- Atlanticism
- Christendom
- Classical tradition
- Culture during the Cold War
- Eastern world
- Eastern culture
- European diaspora
- Greco-Roman world
- Western education
- Western religion
- Westernization
- Western values
Notes
References
Citations
- Hanson, Victor Davis (2007). Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-307-42518-8.
the term "Western" — refer to the culture of classical antiquity that arose in Greece and Rome; survived the collapse of the Roman Empire; spread to western and northern Europe; then during the great periods of exploration and colonization of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries expanded to the Americas, Australia and areas of Asia and Africa; and now exercises global political, economic, cultural, and military power far greater than the size of its territory or population might otherwise suggest.
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- Freeman, Charles (September 2000). The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-029323-4.
The Greeks provided the chromosomes of Western civilization. One does not have to idealize the Greeks to sustain that point. Greek ways of exploring the cosmos, defining the problems of knowledge (and what is meant by knowledge itself), creating the language in which such problems are explored, representing the physical world and human society in the arts, defining the nature of value, describing the past, still underlie the Western cultural tradition
- Cartledge, Paul (2002). The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-157783-3.
Greekness was identified with freedom-spiritual and social as well as political-and slavery was equated with being barbarian, [...] 'democracy' was a Greek invention (celebrating its 2,500th anniversary in 1993/4) [...] an ancient culture, that of the Greeks — is both a foundation stone of our own (Western) civilization and at the same time in key respects a deeply alien phenomenon.
- Pagden, Anthony (2008). Worlds at War: The 2,500 - Year Struggle Between East and West. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923743-2.
Had the Persians overrun all of mainland Greece, had they then transformed the Greek city-states into satrapies of the Persian Empire, had Greek democracy been snuffed out, there would have been no Greek theater, no Greek science, no Plato, no Aristotle, no Sophocles, no Aeschylus. The incredible burst of creative energy that took place during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. and that laid the foundation for all of later Western civilization would never have happened. [...] in the years between 490 and 479 B.C.E., the entire future of the Western world hung precariously in the balance
- Freeman, Charles (September 2000). The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-029323-4.
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In 1,200 years the tiny village of Rome established a republic, conquered all of the Mediterranean basin and western Europe, lost its republic, and finally, surrendered its empire. In the process the Romans laid the foundation of Western civilization. [...] The pragmatic Romans brought Greek and Hebrew ideas down to earth, modified them, and transmitted them throughout western Europe. [...] Roman law remains the basis for the legal codes of most western European and Latin American countries — Even in English-speaking countries, where common law prevails, Roman law has exerted substantial influence
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Side by side with Christianity, the classical Greco-Roman world forms the sound foundation of Western civilization. Greek philosophy is also the origin for the methods and contents of the philosophical thought and theological investigation in Islam and Judaism
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We have ample evidence that the Greek thinkers encountered and responded to many different cultures and ideologies. Consider, for example, the city of Miletus, which was the center of intellectual activity in sixth-century Ionia. Miletus bordered on the Lydian and, later, the Persian empires and had extensive dealings with these cultures.In addition, it had trading relations all over the Mediterranean and sent out numerous colonies to Egypt and Thrace. The Milesian thinkers thus encountered ideas and practices from all over the "known" world. In the Archaic period, the interaction of different peoples from Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the Near East created a cultural ferment that had a profound impact on Greek life and thought.
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- Worth, Helen (28 February 2001). "The End of an Asteroidal Adventure: NEAR Shoemaker Phones Home for the Last Time". Applied Physics Lab.
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At the same time, then as the printing press in the physical technological sense was invented, 'the press' in the extended sense of the word also entered the historical stage. The phenomenon of publishing was now born.
- Hardy, Jonathan (25 February 2010). Western Media Systems. Routledge. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-135-25370-7.
- Hardy, Jonathan (25 February 2010). Western Media Systems. Routledge. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-135-25370-7.
- Küng, Lucy; Picard, Robert G.; Towse, Ruth (14 May 2008). The Internet and the Mass Media. SAGE. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4462-4566-8.
- Perry, Marvin; Chase, Myrna; Jacob, James; Jacob, Margaret; Von Laue, Theodore H. (1 January 2012). Western Civilization: Since 1400. Cengage Learning. p. XXIX. ISBN 978-1-111-83169-1.
- A. J. Richards, David (2010). Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law: Obama's Challenge to Patriarchy's Threat to Democracy. University of Philadelphia Press. p. 177. ISBN 9781139484138.
..for the Jews in twentieth-century Europe, the cradle of Christian civilization.
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..for the Jews in twentieth-century Europe, the cradle of Christian civilization.
- L. Allen, John (2005). The Rise of Benedict XVI: The Inside story of How the Pope Was Elected and What it Means for the World. Penguin UK. ISBN 9780141954714.
Europe is historically the cradle of Christian culture, it is still the primary center of institutional and pastoral energy in the Catholic Church...
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Europe is historically the cradle of Christian culture, it is still the primary center of institutional and pastoral energy in the Catholic Church...
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- "Discrimination in the EU in 2012" (PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 393, European Union: European Commission, p. 233, 2012, retrieved 14 August 2013 The question asked was "Do you consider yourself to be...?" With a card showing: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, and Non-believer/Agnostic. Space was given for Other (SPONTANEOUS) and DK. Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu did not reach the 1% threshold.
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The Bible is the most globally influential and widely read book ever written. ... it has been a major influence on the behavior, laws, customs, education, art, literature, and morality of Western civilization.
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- Ankerl, Guy (2000). Coexisting Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. INUPRESS, Geneva, 119–244. ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
- Atle Hesmyr (2013). Civilization, Oikos, and Progress ISBN 978-1468924190
- Barzun, Jacques From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present HarperCollins (2000) ISBN 0-06-017586-9.
- Daly, Jonathan. "The Rise of Western Power: A Comparative History of Western Civilization Archived 30 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine" (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014). ISBN 978-1441161314.
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- Stearns, P.N. (2003). Western Civilization in World History, Routledge, New York.
- Thornton, Bruce (2002). Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization, Encounter Books.
- Ferguson, Niall, Civilization. The West and the rest, Penguin Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-101-54802-8
- Pinker, Steven, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin Books, 2018. ISBN 978-0-525-42757-5
- Henrich, Joseph, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. ISBN 978-0374173227
- Stark, Rodney, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, Random House, 2006. ISBN 978-0812972337
- Stark, Rodney, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2014. ISBN 978-1497603257
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Further reading
- Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life : 1500 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
- Hesmyr, Atle Kultorp: Civilization; Its Economic Basis, Historical Lessons and Future Prospects (Telemark: Nisus Publications, 2020).
External links
![image](https://www.english.nina.az/wikipedia/image/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZW5nbGlzaC5uaW5hLmF6L3dpa2lwZWRpYS9pbWFnZS9hSFIwY0hNNkx5OTFjR3h2WVdRdWQybHJhVzFsWkdsaExtOXlaeTkzYVd0cGNHVmthV0V2Wlc0dmRHaDFiV0l2TkM4MFlTOURiMjF0YjI1ekxXeHZaMjh1YzNabkx6TXdjSGd0UTI5dGJXOXVjeTFzYjJkdkxuTjJaeTV3Ym1jPS5wbmc=.png)
- An overview of the Western Civilization Archived 24 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine
Western culture also known as Western civilization European civilization Occidental culture Western society or simply the West refers to the internally diverse culture of the Western world The term Western encompasses the social norms ethical values traditional customs belief systems political systems artifacts and technologies primarily rooted in European and Mediterranean histories A broad concept Western culture does not relate to a region with fixed members or geographical confines It generally refers to the classical era cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that expanded across the Mediterranean basin and Europe and later circulated around the world predominantly through colonization and globalization Leonardo da Vinci s Vitruvian Man based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De architecturaPlato arguably the most influential figure in early Western philosophy has influenced virtually all of subsequent Western and Middle Eastern philosophy and theology Historically scholars have closely associated the idea of Western culture with the classical era of Greco Roman antiquity However scholars also acknowledge that other cultures like Ancient Egypt the Phoenician city states and several Near Eastern cultures stimulated and influenced it The Hellenistic period also promoted syncretism blending Greek Roman and Jewish cultures Major advances in literature engineering and science shaped the Hellenistic Jewish culture from which the earliest Christians and the Greek New Testament emerged The eventual Christianization of Europe in late antiquity would ensure that Christianity particularly the Catholic Church remained a dominant force in Western culture for many centuries to follow Western culture continued to develop during the Middle Ages as reforms triggered by the medieval renaissances the influence of the Islamic world via Al Andalus and Sicily including the transfer of technology from the East and Latin translations of Arabic texts on science and philosophy by Greek and Hellenic influenced Islamic philosophers and the Italian Renaissance as Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople brought ancient Greek and Roman texts back to central and western Europe Medieval Christianity is credited with creating the modern university the modern hospital system scientific economics and natural law which would later influence the creation of international law European culture developed a complex range of philosophy medieval scholasticism mysticism and Christian and secular humanism setting the stage for the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century which fundamentally altered religious and political life Led by figures like Martin Luther Protestantism challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and promoted ideas of individual freedom and religious reform paving the way for modern notions of personal responsibility and governance The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries shifted focus to reason science and individual rights influencing revolutions across Europe and the Americas and the development of modern democratic institutions Enlightenment thinkers advanced ideals of political pluralism and empirical inquiry which together with the Industrial Revolution transformed Western society In the 19th and 20th centuries the influence of Enlightenment rationalism continued with the rise of secularism and liberal democracy while the Industrial Revolution fueled economic and technological growth The expansion of rights movements and the decline of religious authority marked significant cultural shifts Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the concept of political pluralism individualism prominent subcultures or countercultures and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and immigration TerminologyThe West as a geographical area is unclear and undefined There is some disagreement about which nations should or should not be included in the category when and why Certainly related conceptual terminology has changed over time in scope meaning and use The term western draws on an affiliation with or a perception of a shared philosophy worldview political and religious heritage grounded in the Greco Roman world the legacy of the Roman Empire and medieval concepts of Christendom For example whether the Eastern Roman Empire anachronistically controversially referred to as the Byzantine Empire or those countries heavily influenced by its legacy should be counted as Western is an example of the possible ambiguity of the term These questions which can be traced back to the affiliation between the culture of ancient Rome and that of Classical Greece a persistent Greek East and Latin West language split within the Roman Empire and an eventual permanent splitting of the Roman Empire in 395 into Western and Eastern halves And perhaps at its worst citation needed culminating in Pope Leo III s transfer of the Roman Empire from the Eastern Roman Empire to the Frankish King Charlemagne in the form of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 the Great Schism of 1054 and the devastating Fourth Crusade of 1204 Conversely traditions of scholarship around Plato Aristotle and Euclid had been forgotten in the Catholic west and were rediscovered by Italians from scholars fleeing the 1453 fall of the Eastern Roman Empire The subsequent Renaissance a conscious effort by Europeans to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of the Greco Roman world eventually encouraged the Age of Discovery the Scientific Revolution Age of Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial Revolution Similarly complicated relationships between virtually all the countries and regions within a broadly defined West can be discussed in the light of a persistently fragmented political landscape resulting in a lack of uniformity and significant diversity between the various cultures affiliating with this shared socio cultural heritage Thus those cultures identifying with the West and with what it means to be western change over time as the geopolitical circumstances of a place changes and what is meant by the terminology changes It is difficult to determine which individuals or places or trends fit into which category and the East West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary page needed Globalization has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all modern cultures are to some extent influenced by aspects of Western culture Stereotypical views of the West have been labeled Occidentalism paralleling Orientalism the term for the 19th century stereotyped views of the East Some philosophers have questioned whether Western culture can be considered a historically sound unified body of thought For example Kwame Anthony Appiah pointed out in 2016 that many of the fundamental influences on Western culture such as those of Greek philosophy are also shared by the Islamic world to a certain extent need quotation to verify Appiah argues that the origin of the Western and European identity can be traced back to the 8th century Muslim invasion of Europe via Iberia when Christians would start to form a common Christian or European identity need quotation to verify Contemporary Latin chronicles from Spain referred to the victors in the Frankish victory over the Umayyads at the 732 Battle of Tours as Europeans according to Appiah denoting a shared sense of identity A former now less acceptable synonym for Western civilisation was the white race As Europeans discovered the extra European world old concepts adapted The area that had formerly been considered the Orient the East became the Near East as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time in the 19th century Thus the Sino Japanese War in 1894 1895 occurred in the Far East while troubles surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire occurred simultaneously in the Near East The term Middle East in the mid 19th century included the territory east of the Ottoman Empire but west of China Greater Persia and Greater India but is now used synonymously with Near East in most languages HistoryThe earliest civilizations which influenced the development of Western culture were those of Mesopotamia the area of the Tigris Euphrates river system largely corresponding to modern day Iraq northeastern Syria southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran the cradle of civilization Ancient Egypt similarly had a strong influence on Western culture Phoenician mercantilism and the introduction of the Alphabetic script boosted state formation in the Aegean and current day Italy and current day Spain spawning civilizations in the Mediterranean such as Ancient Carthage Ancient Greece Etruria and Ancient Rome The Greeks contrasted themselves with both their Eastern neighbours such as the Trojans in Iliad as well as their Northern neighbours who they considered barbarians citation needed Concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire Later ideas of the West were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire What is thought of as Western thought today originates primarily from Greco Roman and Christian traditions with varying degrees of influence from the Germanic Celtic and Slavic peoples and includes the ideals of the Middle Ages the Renaissance Reformation and the Enlightenment The West of the Mediterranean Region during the Antiquity Alexander the Great During the Greco Roman world North Africa and the Western regions of the Middle East were integral parts of the Western civilization due to Hellenization and the direct cultural impact of the conquests of the Roman Empire After the Roman conquests the whole Mediterranean become essentially a Roman inland sea While the concept of a West did not exist until the emergence of the Roman Republic the roots of the concept can be traced back to Ancient Greece Since Homeric literature the Trojan Wars through the accounts of the Persian Wars of Greeks against Persians by Herodotus and right up until the time of Alexander the Great there was a paradigm of a contrast between Greeks and other civilizations Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves in the formulation of Aristotle as something between the advanced civilizations of the Near East who they viewed as soft and slavish and the wild barbarians of most of Europe to the north During this period writers like Herodotus and Xenophon would highlight the importance of freedom in the Ancient Greek world as opposed to the perceived slavery of the so called barbaric world Alexander s conquests led to the emergence of a Hellenistic civilization representing a synthesis of Greek and Near Eastern cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean region The Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Egypt and the Levant which came under Greek rule became part of the Hellenistic world The most important Hellenistic centre of learning was Ptolemaic Egypt which attracted Greek Egyptian Jewish Persian Phoenician and even Indian scholars Hellenistic science philosophy architecture literature and art later provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Europe and the Mediterranean world including the Hellenistic world in its conquests in the 1st century BCE Following the Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world the concept of a West arose as there was a cultural divide between the Greek East and Latin West The Latin speaking Western Roman Empire consisted of Western Europe and Northwest Africa while the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire consisted of the Balkans Asia Minor Egypt and Levant The Greek East was generally wealthier and more advanced than the Latin West citation needed With the exception of Italia the wealthiest provinces of the Roman Empire were in the East particularly Roman Egypt which was the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italia Nevertheless the Celts in the West created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity an example being the poet Caecilius Statius and they developed a large amount of scientific knowledge themselves as seen in their Coligny Calendar The Maison Carree in Nimes one of the best preserved Roman templesThe Roman Empire red and its client states pink at its greatest extent in 117 AD under emperor TrajanThe Roman Empire in 330 The area in red shows the zone of influence of the Latin West while the area in blue shows the eastern Greek part For about five hundred years the Roman Empire maintained the Greek East and consolidated a Latin West but an east west division remained reflected in many cultural norms of the two areas including language Eventually the empire became increasingly split into a Western and Eastern part reviving old ideas of a contrast between an advanced East and a rugged West From the time of Alexander the Great the Hellenistic period Greek civilization came in contact with Jewish civilization Christianity would eventually emerge from the syncretism of Hellenic culture Roman culture and Second Temple Judaism gradually spreading across the Roman Empire and eclipsing its antecedents and influences The Greek and Roman paganism was gradually replaced by Christianity first with its legalisation with the Edict of Milan and then the Edict of Thessalonica which made it the State church of the Roman Empire Catholic Christianity served as a unifying force in Christian parts of Europe and in some respects replaced or competed with the secular authorities The Jewish Christian tradition out of which it had emerged was all but extinguished and antisemitism became increasingly entrenched or even integral to Christendom Much of art and literature law education and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church In a broader sense the Middle Ages with its fertile encounter between Greek philosophical reasoning and Levantine monotheism was not confined to the West but also stretched into the old East The philosophy and science of Classical Greece were largely forgotten in Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire other than in isolated monastic enclaves notably in Ireland which had become Christian but was never conquered by Rome The learning of Classical Antiquity was better preserved in the Eastern Roman Empire Justinian s Corpus Juris Civilis Roman civil law code was created in the East in his capital of Constantinople and that city maintained trade and intermittent political control over outposts such as Venice in the West for centuries Classical Greek learning was also subsumed preserved and elaborated in the rising Eastern world which gradually supplanted Roman Byzantine control as a dominant cultural political force Thus much of the learning of classical antiquity was slowly reintroduced to European civilization in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire The birth of European West during the Middle Ages Mosaic of Justinian I with his court circa 547 549 Basilica of San Vitale Ravenna Italy Two main symbols of the medieval Western civilization on one picture the gothic St Martin s cathedral in Spisske Podhradie Slovakia and the Spis Castle behind the cathedralStone bas relief of Jesus from the Vezelay Abbey Burgundy France Notre Dame the most iconic Gothic cathedral built between 1163 and 1345 After the fall of Rome much of Greco Roman art literature science and even technology were all but lost in the western part of the old empire However this would become the center of a new West Europe fell into political anarchy with many warring kingdoms and principalities Under the Frankish kings it eventually and partially reunified and the anarchy evolved into feudalism The Medieval West referred specifically to the Catholic Latin West also called Frankish during Charlemagne s reign in contrast to the Orthodox East where Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire The earliest recorded concept of Europe as a cultural sphere instead of simply a geographic term was formed by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century during the Carolingian Renaissance limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time European as a cultural term did not include much of the territories where the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century Much of the basis of the post Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Western Roman Empire mainly through the integration and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought The Eastern Orthodox Church founded many cathedrals monasteries and seminaries some of which continue to exist today After the fall of the Roman Empire many of the classical Greek texts were translated into Arabic and preserved in the medieval Islamic world The Greek classics along with Arabic science philosophy and technology were transmitted to Western Europe and translated into Latin sparking the Renaissance of the 12th century and 13th century Thomas Aquinas a Catholic philosopher of the Middle Ages revived and developed natural law from ancient Greek philosophy Medieval Christianity is credited with creating the first modern universities The Catholic Church established a hospital system in Medieval Europe that vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria and Greek healing temples These hospitals were established to cater to particular social groups marginalized by poverty sickness and age according to the historian of hospitals Guenter Risse Christianity played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies such as human sacrifice slavery infanticide and polygamy Francisco de Vitoria a disciple of Thomas Aquinas and a Catholic thinker who studied the issue regarding the human rights of colonized natives is recognized by the United Nations as a father of international law and now also by historians of economics and democracy as a leading light for the West s democracy and rapid economic development Joseph Schumpeter an economist of the twentieth century referring to the Scholastics wrote it is they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the founders of scientific economics The rediscovery of the Justinian Code in Western Europe early in the 10th century rekindled a passion for the discipline of law which crossed many of the re forming boundaries between East and West In the Catholic or Frankish west Roman law became the foundation on which all legal concepts and systems were based Its influence is found in all Western legal systems although in different manners and to different extents The study of canon law the legal system of the Catholic Church fused with that of Roman law to form the basis of the refounding of Western legal scholarship From Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages and onwards while Eastern Europe was shaped by the Eastern Orthodox Church Southern and Central Europe were increasingly stabilized by the Catholic Church which as Roman imperial governance faded from view was the only consistent force in Western Europe In 1054 came the Great Schism that following the Greek East and Latin West divide separated Europe into religious and cultural regions present to this day Later Middle Ages Rome and Reformation In the 14th century the Renaissance starting from Italy and then spreading throughout Europe there was a massive artistic architectural scientific and philosophical revival as a result of the Christian revival of Greek philosophy and the long Christian medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities This period is commonly referred to as the Renaissance In the following century this process was further enhanced by an exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian cities such as Florence and Venice after the end of the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople Christopher Columbus arrives at the New World Until the Age of Enlightenment Christian culture took over as the predominant force in Western civilization guiding the course of philosophy art and science for many years Movements in art and philosophy such as the Humanist movement of the Renaissance and the Scholastic movement of the High Middle Ages were motivated by a drive to connect Catholicism with Greek and Arab thought imported by Christian pilgrims However due to the division in Western Christianity caused by the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment religious influence especially the temporal power of the Pope began to wane During the Reformation and Enlightenment the ideas of civil rights equality before the law procedural justice and democracy as the ideal form of society began to be institutionalized as principles forming the basis of modern Western culture particularly in Protestant regions Expansion of the West the Era of Colonialism 15th 20th centuries The United States ConstitutionEarly modern era From the late 15th century to the 17th century Western culture began to spread to other parts of the world through explorers and missionaries during the Age of Discovery and by imperialists from the 17th century to the early 20th century During the Great Divergence a term coined by Samuel Huntington the Western world overcame pre modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization of the time eclipsing Qing China Mughal India Tokugawa Japan and the Ottoman Empire The process was accompanied and reinforced by the Age of Discovery and continued into the modern period Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened including lack of government intervention geography colonialism and customary traditions The Age of Discovery faded into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century during which cultural and intellectual forces in European society emphasized reason analysis and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority It challenged the authority of institutions that were deeply rooted in society such as the Catholic Church there was much talk of ways to reform society with toleration science and skepticism Philosophers of the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon Rene Descartes John Locke Baruch Spinoza Voltaire 1694 1778 Jean Jacques Rousseau David Hume and Immanuel Kant who influenced society by publishing widely read works Upon learning about enlightened views some rulers met with intellectuals and tried to apply their reforms such as allowing for toleration or accepting multiple religions in what became known as enlightened absolutism New ideas and beliefs spread around Europe and were fostered by an increase in literacy due to a departure from solely religious texts Publications include Encyclopedie 1751 72 that was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d Alembert The Dictionnaire philosophique Philosophical Dictionary 1764 and Letters on the English 1733 written by Voltaire spread the ideals of the Enlightenment Coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment was the scientific revolution spearheaded by Newton This included the emergence of modern science during which developments in mathematics physics astronomy biology including human anatomy and chemistry transformed views of society and nature excessive citations While its dates are disputed the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is often cited as marking the beginning of the scientific revolution and its completion is attributed to the grand synthesis of Newton s 1687 Principia Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840 This included going from hand production methods to machines new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes improved efficiency of water power the increasing use of steam power and the development of machine tools These transitions began in Great Britain and spread to Western Europe and North America within a few decades A Watt steam engine The steam engine made of iron and fueled primarily by coal propelled the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the world The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way In particular average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase consistently for the first time in history although others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians as is the pace of economic and social changes GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per capita economic growth in capitalist economies Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals plants and fire The First Industrial Revolution evolved into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition years between 1840 and 1870 when technological and economic progress continued with the increasing adoption of steam transport steam powered railways boats and ships the large scale manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in steam powered factories Post Industrial era Tendencies that have come to define modern Western societies include the concept of political pluralism individualism prominent subcultures or countercultures such as New Age movements and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and immigration Western culture has been heavily influenced by the Renaissance the Ages of Discovery and Enlightenment and the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions In the 20th century Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries mostly in the European Union where some member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years and also elsewhere Secularism separating religion from politics and science increased Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world where 70 are Christians The West went through a series of great cultural and social changes between 1945 and 1980 The emergent mass media film radio television and recorded music created a global culture that could ignore national frontiers Literacy became almost universal encouraging the growth of books magazines and newspapers The influence of cinema and radio remained while televisions became near essentials in every home By the mid 20th century Western culture was exported worldwide and the development and growth of international transport and telecommunication such as transatlantic cable and the radiotelephone played a decisive role in modern globalization The West has contributed a great many technological political philosophical artistic and religious aspects to modern international culture having been a crucible of Catholicism Protestantism democracy industrialisation the first major civilisation to seek to abolish slavery during the 19th century the first to enfranchise women beginning in Australasia at the end of the 19th century and the first to put to use such technologies as steam electric and nuclear power The West invented cinema television the personal computer the Internet and video games developed sports such as soccer cricket golf tennis rugby basketball and volleyball and transported humans to an astronomical object for the first time with the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Landing Arts and humanitiesDetail of the Bayeux Tapestry showing William the Conqueror centre his half brothers Robert Count of Mortain right and Odo Bishop of Bayeux in the Duchy of Normandy left The Bayeux tapestry is one of the supreme achievements of the Norman Romanesque While dance music visual art story telling and architecture are human universals they are expressed in the West in certain characteristic ways Music In music Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church and an enormous body of religious music has been composed for it through the ages This led directly to the emergence and development of European classical music and its many derivatives The Baroque style which encompassed music art and architecture was particularly encouraged by the post Reformation Catholic Church as such forms offered a means of religious expression that was stirring and emotional intended to stimulate religious fervor The symphony concerto sonata opera and oratorio have their origins in Italy Many musical instruments developed in the West have come to see widespread use all over the world among them are the guitar violin piano pipe organ saxophone trombone clarinet accordion and the theremin In turn it has been claimed that some European instruments have roots in earlier Eastern instruments that were adopted from the medieval Islamic world The solo piano symphony orchestra and the string quartet are also significant musical innovations of the West Claudio Monteverdi 1567 1643 Antonio Lucio Vivaldi 1678 1741 George Frideric Handel 1685 1759 Johann Sebastian Bach 1685 1750 Franz Joseph Haydn 1732 1809 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 1791 Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 1827 Frederic Francois Chopin 1810 1849 Franz Liszt 1811 1886Painting and photography Jan van Eyck among other renaissance painters made great advances in oil painting and perspective drawings and paintings had their earliest practitioners in Florence In art the Celtic knot is a very distinctive Western repeated motif Depictions of the nude human male and female in photography painting and sculpture are frequently considered to have special artistic merit Realistic portraiture is especially valued Photography and the motion picture as both a technology and basis for entirely new art forms were also developed in the West Restoration of a fresco from an Ancient Roman villa bedroom circa 50 40 BC dimensions of the room 265 4 334 583 9 cm in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York City Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci c 1503 1506 perhaps continuing until circa 1517 oil on poplar panel 77 cm 53 cm Louvre Paris Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez 1656 oil on canvas 318 cm 276 cm El Prado Madrid Dance at Le moulin de la Galette by Pierre Auguste Renoir 1876 oil on canvas height 131 cm Musee d Orsay Paris Photo of the interior of the apartment of Eugene Atget taken in 1910 in Paris Reverie by Alphonse Mucha poster for the publishing house Champenois 1897 Dance and performing arts Classical music opera and ballet Swan Lake pictured The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite The polka the square dance the flamenco and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance Greek and Roman theatre are considered the antecedents of modern theatre and forms such as medieval theatre Passion Plays morality plays and commedia dell arte are considered highly influential Elizabethan theatre with playwrights including William Shakespeare Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson is considered one of the most formative and important eras for modern drama The soap opera a popular culture dramatic form originated in the United States first on radio in the 1930s then a couple of decades later on television The music video was also developed in the West in the middle of the 20th century Musical theatre was developed in the West in the 19th and 20th Centuries from music hall comic opera and Vaudeville with significant contributions from the Jewish diaspora African Americans and other marginalized peoples Literature The Divine Comedy is an epic poem by Dante Alighieri Engraving by Gustave Dore Western literature encompasses the literary traditions of Europe as well as North America Oceania and Latin America While epic literary works in verse such as the Mahabharata and Homer s Iliad are ancient and occurred worldwide the prose novel as a distinct form of storytelling with developed consistent human characters and typically some connected overall plot although both of these characteristics have sometimes been modified and played with in later times was popularized by the West in the 17th and 18th centuries Of course extended prose fiction had existed much earlier both novels of adventure and romance in the Hellenistic world and in Heian Japan Both Petronius Satyricon c 60 CE and the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu c 1000 CE have been cited as the world s first major novel but they had a very limited long term impact on literary writing beyond their own day until much more recent times The novel which made its appearance in the 18th century is an essentially European creation Chinese and Japanese literature contain some works that may be thought of as novels but only the European novel is couched in terms of a personal analysis of personal dilemmas As in its artistic tradition European literature pays deep tribute to human suffering Tragedy from its ritually and mythologically inspired Greek origins to modern forms where struggle and downfall are often rooted in psychological or social rather than mythical motives is also widely considered a specifically European creation and can be seen as a forerunner of some aspects of both the novel and of classical opera The validity of reason was postulated in both Christian philosophy and the Greco Roman classics Christianity laid a stress on the inward aspects of actions and on motives notions that were foreign to the ancient world This subjectivity which grew out of the Christian belief that man could achieve a personal union with God resisted all challenges and made itself the fulcrum on which all literary exposition turned including the 20th 21st century novels Architecture This section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed June 2022 Learn how and when to remove this message Important Western architectural motifs include the Doric Corinthian and Ionic orders of Greek architecture and the Romanesque Gothic Renaissance Baroque and Victorian styles which are still widely recognized and used in contemporary Western architecture Much of Western architecture emphasizes repetition of simple motifs straight lines and expansive undecorated planes A modern ubiquitous architectural form that emphasizes this characteristic is the skyscraper their modern equivalent first developed in New York and Chicago The predecessor of the skyscraper can be found in the medieval towers erected in Bologna The Parthenon under restoration in 2008 the most iconic Classical building built from 447 BC to 432 BC located in Athens The facade of Angouleme Cathedral was built between 1110 and 1128 in the Romanesque style Stained glass windows of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris completed in 1248 mostly constructed between 1194 and 1220 in the Gothic style The Palazzo Farnese in Rome built from 1534 to 1545 was designed by Sangallo and Michelangelo and is an important example of renaissance architecture The Palais Garnier in Paris built between 1861 and 1875 a Beaux Arts masterpieceCuisineWestern foodways were until recently considered to have their roots in the cuisines of Classical Rome and Greece but the influence of Arab and Near Eastern cuisine on the West has become a topic of research in recent decades The Crusaders known mostly for fighting over holy land settled in the Levant and acclimated to the local culture and cuisine Fulcher of Chartres said For we who were occidentals have now become orientals These cultural experiences carried back to France by notables like Eleanor of Aquitaine influenced Western European foodways Many Oriental ingredients were relatively new to the Western lands Sugar almonds pistachios rosewater and dried citrus fruits were all novelties to the Crusaders who encountered them in Saracen lands Pepper ginger and cinnamon were the most widely used spices of the European courts and noble households By the end of the Middle Ages cloves nutmeg mastic galingale and other imported spices had become part of the Western cuisine Saracen influence can be seen in medieval cookbooks Some recipes retain their Arabic names in Italian translations of the Liber de Coquina Known as bruet Sarassinois in the cuisine of North France the concept of sweet and sour sauce is attested to in Greek tradition when Anthimus finishes his stew with vinegar and honey Saracens combined sweet ingredients like date juice and honey with pomegranate lemons and citrus juices or other sour ingredients The technique of browning pieces of meat and simmering in liquid with vegetables is used in many recipes from the Baghdad cookery book The same technique appears in the late 13th century Viandier Fried pieces of beef simmered in wine with sugar and cloves was called bruet of Sarcynesse in English Scientific and technological inventions and discoveriesMedieval Christians believed that to seek the geometric physical and mathematical principles that govern the world was to seek and worship God Detail of a scene in the bowl of the letter P with a woman with a set square and dividers using a compass to measure distances on a diagram In her left hand she holds a square an implement for testing or drawing right angles She is watched by a group of students In the Middle Ages it is unusual to see women represented as teachers in particular when the students appear to be monks She is most likely the personification of Geometry based on Martianus Capella s famous book De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 5th c a standard source for allegorical imagery of the seven liberal arts Illustration at the beginning of Euclid s Elementa in the translation attributed to Adelard of Bath A doctor of philosophy of the University of Oxford in full academic dress The typical dress for graduation are gowns and hoods or hats adapted from the daily dress of university staff in the Middle Ages which was in turn based on the attire worn by medieval clergy The Greek Antikythera mechanism is generally referred to as the first known analogue computer Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin Apollo Lunar Module pilot of the first crewed mission to land on the Moon poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during his Extravehicular Activity EVA on the lunar surface A notable feature of Western culture is its strong emphasis and focus on innovation and invention through science and technology and its ability to generate new processes materials and material artifacts with its roots dating back to the Ancient Greeks The scientific method as a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century consisting in systematic observation measurement and experiment and the formulation testing and modification of hypotheses was fashioned by the 17th century Italian Galileo Galilei with roots in the work of medieval scholars such as the 11th century Iraqi physicist Ibn al Haytham and the 13th century English friar Roger Bacon By the will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel the Nobel Prizes were established in 1895 The prizes in Chemistry Literature Peace Physics and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901 The percentage of ethnically European Nobel prize winners during the first and second halves of the 20th century were respectively 98 and 94 percent The West is credited with the development of the steam engine and adapting its use into factories and for the generation of electric power The electrical motor dynamo transformer electric light and most of the familiar electrical appliances were inventions of the West The Otto and the Diesel internal combustion engines are products whose genesis and early development were in the West Nuclear power stations are derived from the first atomic pile constructed in Chicago in 1942 Communication devices and systems including the telegraph the telephone radio television communications and navigation satellites mobile phone and the Internet were all invented by Westerners The pencil ballpoint pen Cathode ray tube liquid crystal display light emitting diode camera photocopier laser printer ink jet printer plasma display screen and World Wide Web were also invented in the West Ubiquitous materials including aluminum clear glass synthetic rubber synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene polypropylene polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene were discovered and developed or invented in the West Iron and steel ships bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the West Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were invented by Westerners Most of the elements were discovered and named in the West as well as the contemporary atomic theories to explain them The transistor integrated circuit memory chip first programming language and computer were all first seen in the West The ship s chronometer the screw propeller the locomotive bicycle automobile and airplane were all invented in the West Eyeglasses the telescope the microscope and electron microscope all the varieties of chromatography protein and DNA sequencing computerised tomography nuclear magnetic resonance x rays and light ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories hospitals and factories citation needed In medicine the pure antibiotics were created in the West The method of preventing Rh disease the treatment of diabetes and the germ theory of disease were discovered by Westerners The eradication of smallpox was led by a Westerner Donald Henderson Radiography computed tomography positron emission tomography and medical ultrasonography are important diagnostic tools developed in the West Other important diagnostic tools of clinical chemistry including the methods of spectrophotometry electrophoresis and immunoassay were first devised by Westerners So were the stethoscope the electrocardiograph and the endoscope Vitamins hormonal contraception hormones insulin beta blockers and ACE inhibitors along with a host of other medically proven drugs were first used to treat disease in the West The double blind study and evidence based medicine are critical scientific techniques widely used in the West for medical purposes citation needed Euler is widely regarded to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history In mathematics calculus statistics logic vectors tensors and complex analysis group theory abstract algebra and topology were developed by Westerners In biology evolution chromosomes DNA genetics and the methods of molecular biology are creations of the West In physics the science of mechanics and quantum mechanics relativity thermodynamics and statistical mechanics were all developed by Westerners The discoveries and inventions by Westerners in electromagnetism include Coulomb s law 1785 the first battery 1800 the unity of electricity and magnetism 1820 Biot Savart law 1820 Ohm s law 1827 and Maxwell s equations 1871 The atom nucleus electron neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners citation needed The world s most widely adopted system of measurement the International System of Units derived from the metric system was first developed in France and evolved through contributions from various Westerners In business economics and finance double entry bookkeeping credit cards and the charge card were all first used in the West Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and outer space The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth 1522 was by Westerners as well as the first journey to the South Pole 1911 and the first Moon landing 1969 The landing of robots on Mars 2004 and 2012 and on an asteroid 2001 the Voyager 2 explorations of the outer planets Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989 Voyager 1 s passage into interstellar space 2013 and New Horizons flyby of Pluto 2015 were significant recent Western achievements MediaThe roots of modern day Western mass media can be traced back to the late 15th century when printing presses began to operate throughout wealthy European cities The emergence of news media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives its name In the 16th century a decrease in the preeminence of Latin in its literary use along with the impact of economic change the discoveries arising from trade and travel navigation to the New World science and arts and the development of increasingly rapid communications through print led to a rising corpus of vernacular media content in European society After the launch of the satellite Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 satellite transmission technology was dramatically realised with the United States launching Telstar in 1962 linking live media broadcasts from the UK to the US The first digital broadcast satellite DBS system began transmitting in US in 1975 Beginning in the 1990s the Internet has contributed to a tremendous increase in the accessibility of Western media content Departing from media offered in bundled content packages magazines CDs television and radio slots the Internet has primarily offered unbundled content items articles audio and video files ReligionThe native religions of Europe were polytheistic but not homogenous however they were similar insofar as they were predominantly Indo European in origin Roman religion was similar to but not the same as Hellenic religion likewise for indigenous Germanic polytheism Celtic polytheism and Slavic polytheism Before this time many Europeans from the north especially Scandinavians remained polytheistic though southern Europe was predominantly Christian from the 5th century onwards Western culture at a fundamental level is influenced by the Judeo Christian and Greco Roman traditions These cultures had a number of similarities such as a common emphasis on the individual but they also embody fundamentally conflicting worldviews For example in Judaism and Christianity God is the ultimate authority while Greco Roman tradition considers the ultimate authority to be reason Christian attempts to reconcile these frameworks were responsible for the preservation of Greek philosophy Historically Europe has been the center and cradle of Christian civilization According to a survey by Pew Research Center from 2011 Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world where 70 84 are Christians According to this survey 76 of Europeans described themselves as Christians and about 86 of the Americas population identified themselves as Christians 90 in Latin America and 77 in North America 73 in Oceania self identify as Christian and 76 in South Africa are Christian Eurobarometer polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2012 found that Christianity was the largest religion in the European Union accounting for 72 of the population Catholics are the largest Christian group accounting for 48 while Protestants make up 12 Eastern Orthodox make up 8 and other Christians make up 4 of the population respectively In addition Non believers Agnostics account for 16 atheists account for 7 and Muslims account for 2 of the population repectively According to Scholars in 2017 Europe s population was 77 8 Christian up from 74 9 1970 these changes were largely largely ascribed to the collapse of Communism and switching to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries At the same time there has been an increase in the share of agnostic or atheist residents in Europe that accounted for 18 of the European population in 2012 In particular over half of the population of the Czech Republic 79 was agnostic atheist or irreligious compared to the United Kingdom 52 Germany 25 33 France 30 35 and the Netherlands 39 44 As in other areas the Jewish diaspora and Judaism exist in the Western world There are also small but increasing numbers of people across the Western world who seek to revive the indigenous religions of their European ancestors such groups include Germanic Roman Hellenic Celtic Slavic and polytheistic reconstructionist movements Likewise Wicca New Age spirituality and other neo pagan belief systems enjoy notable minority support in Western states SportThe Bull Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos Crete Sport has been an important part of Western culture since Classical Antiquity Baron Pierre de Coubertin founder of the International Olympic Committee and considered father of the modern Olympic Games Since classical antiquity sport has been an important facet of Western cultural expression A wide range of sports was already established by the time of Ancient Greece and the military culture and the development of sports in Greece influenced one another considerably Sports became such a prominent part of their culture that the Greeks created the Olympic Games which in ancient times were held every four years in a small village in the Peloponnesus called Olympia Baron Pierre de Coubertin a Frenchman instigated the modern revival of the Olympic movement The first modern Olympic games were held at Athens in 1896 The Romans built immense structures such as the amphitheatres to house their festivals of sport The Romans exhibited a passion for blood sports such as the infamous Gladiatorial battles that pitted contestants against one another in a fight to the death The Olympic Games revived many of the sports of classical antiquity such as Greco Roman wrestling discus and javelin The sport of bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain Portugal southern France and some Latin American countries It traces its roots to prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice and is often linked to Rome where many human versus animal events were held Bullfighting spread from Spain to its American colonies and in the 19th century to France where it developed into a distinctive form in its own right Jousting and hunting were popular sports in the European Middle Ages and the aristocratic classes developed passions for leisure activities A great number of popular global sports were first developed or codified in Europe The modern game of golf originated in Scotland where the first written record of golf is James II s banning of the game in 1457 as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery The Industrial Revolution that began in Great Britain in the 18th century brought increased leisure time leading to more opportunities for citizens to participate in athletic activities and also follow spectator sports These trends continued with the advent of mass media and global communication The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in the United Kingdom during the 19th century and obtained global prominence these include ping pong modern tennis association football netball and rugby Football or soccer remains hugely popular in Europe but has grown from its origins to be known as the world game Similarly sports such as cricket rugby and netball were exported around the world particularly among countries in the Commonwealth of Nations thus India and Australia are among the strongest cricketing states while victory in the Rugby World Cup has been shared among New Zealand Australia England and South Africa Australian Rules Football an Australian variation of football with similarities to Gaelic football and rugby evolved in the British colony of Victoria in the mid 19th century The United States also developed unique variations of English sports English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football Many games are known as football were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp the Father of American football Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield Massachusetts in the United States Volleyball was created in Holyoke Massachusetts a city directly north of Springfield in 1895 Themes and traditionsA Madonna and Child painting by an anonymous Italian from the first half of the 19th century oil on canvas Western culture has developed many themes and traditions the most significant of which are citation needed Greco Roman classic letters arts architecture philosophical and cultural tradition which include the influence of preeminent authors and philosophers such as Socrates Plato Aristotle Homer Virgil and Cicero as well as a long mythologic tradition Christian ethical philosophical and mythological tradition stemming largely from the Christian Bible particularly the New Testament Gospels Monasteries schools libraries books book making universities teaching education and lecture halls A tradition of the importance of the rule of law Secular humanism rationalism and Enlightenment thought This set the basis for a new critical attitude and open questioning of religion favouring freethinking and questioning of the church as an authority which resulted in open minded and reformist ideals inside such as liberation theology which partly adopted these currents and secular and political tendencies such as separation of church and state sometimes termed laicism agnosticism and atheism Generalized usage of some form of the Latin or Greek alphabet and derived forms such as Cyrillic used by those southern and eastern Slavic countries of Christian Orthodox tradition historically under the Byzantine Empire and later within the Russian czarist or the Soviet area of influence Other variants of the Latin or Greek alphabets are found in the Gothic and Coptic alphabets which historically superseded older scripts such as runes and the Egyptian Demotic and Hieroglyphic systems Natural law human rights constitutionalism parliamentarism or presidentialism and formal liberal democracy in recent times prior to the 19th century most Western governments were still monarchies A large influence in modern times of many of the ideals and values developed and inherited from Romanticism An emphasis on and use of science as a means of understanding the natural world and humanity s place in it More pronounced use and application of innovation and scientific developments as well as a more rational approach to scientific progress what has been known as the scientific method See alsoSociety portalEurope portalAtlanticism Christendom Classical tradition Culture during the Cold War Eastern world Eastern culture European diaspora Greco Roman world Western education Western religion Westernization Western valuesNotesBritish archaeologist D G Hogarth published The Nearer East in 1902 which helped to define the term and its extent including Albania Montenegro southern Serbia and Bulgaria Greece Egypt all Ottoman lands the entire Arabian Peninsula and Western parts of Iran ReferencesCitations Hanson Victor Davis 2007 Carnage and Culture Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power Knopf Doubleday ISBN 978 0 307 42518 8 the term Western refer to the culture of classical antiquity that arose in Greece and Rome survived the collapse of the Roman Empire spread to western and northern Europe then during the great periods of exploration and colonization of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries expanded to the Americas Australia and areas of Asia and Africa and now exercises global political economic cultural and military power far greater than the size of its territory or population might otherwise suggest Freeman Charles September 2000 The Greek Achievement The Foundation of the Western World Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 029323 4 The Greeks provided the chromosomes of Western civilization One does not have to idealize the Greeks to sustain that point Greek ways of exploring the cosmos defining the problems of knowledge and what is meant by knowledge itself creating the language in which such problems are explored representing the physical world and human society in the arts defining the nature of value describing the past still underlie the Western cultural traditionCartledge Paul 2002 The Greeks A Portrait of Self and Others Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 157783 3 Greekness was identified with freedom spiritual and social as well as political and slavery was equated with being barbarian democracy was a Greek invention celebrating its 2 500th anniversary in 1993 4 an ancient culture that of the Greeks is both a foundation stone of our own Western civilization and at the same time in key respects a deeply alien phenomenon Pagden Anthony 2008 Worlds at War The 2 500 Year Struggle Between East and West Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 923743 2 Had the Persians overrun all of mainland Greece had they then transformed the Greek city states into satrapies of the Persian Empire had Greek democracy been snuffed out there would have been no Greek theater no Greek science no Plato no Aristotle no Sophocles no Aeschylus The incredible burst of creative energy that took place during the fifth and fourth centuries B C E and that laid the foundation for all of later Western civilization would never have happened in the years between 490 and 479 B C E the entire future of the Western world hung precariously in the balance Richard Carl J 16 April 2010 Why We re All Romans The Roman Contribution to the Western World Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 978 0 7425 6780 1 In 1 200 years the tiny village of Rome established a republic conquered all of the Mediterranean basin and western Europe lost its republic and finally surrendered its empire In the process the Romans laid the foundation of Western civilization The pragmatic Romans brought Greek and Hebrew ideas down to earth modified them and transmitted them throughout western Europe Roman law remains the basis for the legal codes of most western European and Latin American countries Even in English speaking countries where common law prevails Roman law has exerted substantial influenceSharon Moshe 2004 Studies in Modern Religions Religious Movements and the Baabai Bahaa ai Faiths Brill ISBN 978 90 04 13904 6 Side by side with Christianity the classical Greco Roman world forms the sound foundation of Western civilization Greek philosophy is also the origin for the methods and contents of the philosophical thought and theological investigation in Islam and JudaismGrant Michael 1991 The Founders of the Western World A History of Greece and Rome Scribner ISBN 978 0 684 19303 8 via Internet Archive Perry Marvin Chase Myrna Jacob James Jacob Margaret Laue Theodore H Von 2012 Western Civilization Since 1400 Cengage ISBN 978 1 111 83169 1 Nightingale Andrea 2007 The Philosophers in Archaic Greek Culture In Shapiro H A Antonaccio Carla M eds The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece Cambridge companions to the ancient world Cambridge University Press p 171 ISBN 978 0 521 52929 7 We have ample evidence that the Greek thinkers encountered and responded to many different cultures and ideologies Consider for example the city of Miletus which was the center of intellectual activity in sixth century Ionia Miletus bordered on the Lydian and later the Persian empires and had extensive dealings with these cultures In addition it had trading relations all over the Mediterranean and sent out numerous colonies to Egypt and Thrace The Milesian thinkers thus encountered ideas and practices from all over the known world In the Archaic period the interaction of different peoples from Greece Italy Egypt and the Near East created a cultural ferment that had a profound impact on Greek life and thought Boardman John 1982 The material culture of Archaic Greece in Boardman John Hammond N G L eds The Cambridge Ancient History vol 3 2nd ed Cambridge University Press p 450 doi 10 1017 chol9780521234474 018 ISBN 978 0 521 23447 4 retrieved 20 October 2024 Knowledge of Egyptian art after the mid century led to Greek exploitation of the harder stone their white island marble for the first time and the creation of figures at life size or more We know these best the kouroi and korai as dedications and grave markers but a prime use for monumental statuary must have been as cult images and it is at about this time that the temple houses oikoi for these images begin to receive a monumental form and again probably through inspiration from Egypt are decorated with architectural orders first the Doric in homeland Greece then the orientalizing Ionic in the East Greek world Scott John C 2018 The Phoenicians and the Formation of the Western World Comparative Civilizations Review 78 78 Brigham Young University ISSN 0733 4540 Green P 2008 Alexander The Great and the Hellenistic Age Phoenix p xiii ISBN 978 0 7538 2413 9 Porter Stanley E 2013 Early Christianity in its Hellenistic context Volume 2 Christian origins and Hellenistic Judaism social and literary contexts for the New Testament Leiden Brill ISBN 978 9004234765 Hengel Martin 2003 Judaism and Hellenism studies in their encounter in Palestine during the early Hellenistic period Eugene OR Wipf amp Stock ISBN 978 1 59244 186 0 Spielvogel Jackson J 2016 Western Civilization A Brief History Volume I To 1715 Cengage Learning ed Cengage Learning p 156 ISBN 978 1 305 63347 6 Neill Thomas Patrick 1957 Readings in the History of Western Civilization Volume 2 Newman Press ed p 224 O Collins Gerald Farrugia Maria 2003 Catholicism The Story of Catholic Christianity Oxford University Press p v ISBN 978 0 19 925995 3 Haskins Charles Homer 1927 The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century Cambridge Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 6747 6075 2 George Sarton A Guide to the History of Science Waltham Mass U S A 1952 Burnett Charles The Coherence of the Arabic Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century Science in Context 14 2001 249 288 Geanakoplos Deno John 1989 Constantinople and the West essays on the late Byzantine Palaeologan and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman churches Madison Wis University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0 299 11880 0 OCLC 19353503 Ruegg Walter Foreword The University as a European Institution in A History of the University in Europe Vol 1 Universities in the Middle Ages Cambridge University Press 1992 ISBN 0 521 36105 2 pp xix xx Verger 1999harvnb error no target CITEREFVerger1999 help Risse Guenter B April 1999 Mending Bodies Saving Souls A History of Hospitals Oxford University Press p 59 ISBN 978 0 19 505523 8 Schumpeter Joseph 1954 History of Economic Analysis London Allen amp Unwin Review of How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas Woods Jr National Review Book Service Archived from the original on 22 August 2006 Retrieved 16 September 2006 Cf Jeremy Waldron 2002 God Locke and Equality Christian Foundations in Locke s Political Thought Cambridge University Press Cambridge UK ISBN 978 0 521 89057 1 pp 189 208 The Protestant Heritage Archived 23 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine Britannica McNeill William H 2010 History of Western Civilization A Handbook University of Chicago Press ed University of Chicago Press p 204 ISBN 978 0 226 56162 2 Faltin Lucia Melanie J Wright 2007 The Religious Roots of Contemporary European Identity A amp C Black ed A amp C Black p 83 ISBN 978 0 8264 9482 5 Karl Heussi Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte 11 Auflage 1956 Tubingen Germany pp 317 319 325 326 Yin Cheong Cheng New Paradigm for Re engineering Education p 369 Ainslie Thomas Embree Carol Gluck Asia in Western and World History A Guide for Teaching p xvi Kwang Sae Lee East and West Fusion of Horizons page needed Kwame Anthony Appiah 9 November 2016 There Is No Such Thing As Western Civilization Kwame Anthony Appiah 9 November 2016 There Is No Such Thing As Western Civilization the first recorded use of a word for Europeans as a kind of person so far as I know comes out of this history of conflict In a Latin chronicle written in 754 in Spain the author refers to the victors of the Battle of Tours as Europenses Europeans So simply put the very idea of a European was first used to contrast Christians and Muslims Graeber David Wengrow David 9 November 2021 Farewell to Humanity s Childhood The Dawn of Everything A New History of Humanity Farrar Straus and Giroux ISBN 9780374721107 Retrieved 28 February 2023 that one group of humans who used to refer to themselves as the white race and now generally call themselves by its more accepted synonym Western civilization Davidson Roderic H 1960 Where is the Middle East Foreign Affairs 38 4 665 75 doi 10 2307 20029452 JSTOR 20029452 S2CID 157454140 Jacobus Bronowski The Ascent of Man Angus amp Robertson 1973 ISBN 0 563 17064 6 Geoffrey Blainey A Very Short History of the World Penguin Books 2004 Scott 2018 pp 38 39 Stearns Peter N 2003 Western civilization in world history New York Routledge ISBN 9781134374755 Polybius 1980 The Rise of the Roman Empire Oxford University Press p 177 ISBN 9780140443622 Hanson Victor Davis 18 December 2007 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349 10484 0 Joseph E Inikori Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 01079 9 permanent dead link Berg Maxine Hudson Pat 1992 Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution PDF The Economic History Review 45 1 24 50 doi 10 2307 2598327 JSTOR 2598327 Julie Lorenzen Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution Archived from the original on 9 November 2006 Retrieved 9 November 2006 2003 The Industrial Revolution Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Archived from the original on 27 November 2007 Retrieved 14 November 2007 it is fairly clear that up to 1800 or maybe 1750 no society had experienced sustained growth in per capita income Eighteenth century population growth also averaged one third of 1 percent the same as production growth That is up to about two centuries ago per capita incomes in all societies were stagnated at around 400 to 800 per year Lucas Robert 2003 The Industrial Revolution Past and Future Archived from the original on 27 November 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be With a card showing Catholic Orthodox Protestant Other Christian Jewish Muslim Sikh Buddhist Hindu Atheist and Non believer Agnostic Space was given for Other SPONTANEOUS and DK Jewish Sikh Buddhist Hindu did not reach the 1 threshold Discrimination in the EU in 2012 PDF Special Eurobarometer 383 233 2012 Archived from the original PDF on 2 December 2012 Retrieved 14 August 2013 Zurlo Gina Skirbekk Vegard Grim Brian 2019 Yearbook of International Religious Demography 2017 BRILL p 85 ISBN 9789004346307 Ogbonnaya Joseph 2017 African Perspectives on Culture and World Christianity Cambridge Scholars Publishing pp 2 4 ISBN 9781443891592 Religiously Unaffiliated Pewforum org 18 December 2012 Retrieved 31 January 2014 Germany State gov 14 September 2007 Retrieved 31 January 2014 Views on globalisation and faith Archived 17 January 2013 at the Wayback Machine Ipsos MORI 5 July 2011 in French Catholicisme et protestantisme en France Analyses sociologiques et donnees de l Institut CSA pour La 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and New York Routledge 2015 ISBN 978 1138774810 Derry T K and Williams Trevor I A Short History of Technology From the Earliest Times to A D 1900 Dover 1960 ISBN 0 486 27472 1 Duran Eduardo Bonnie Dyran Native American Postcolonial Psychology 1995 Albany State University of New York Press ISBN 0 7914 2353 0 Hanson Victor Davis Heath John 2001 Who Killed Homer The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom Encounter Books Jones Prudence and Pennick Nigel A History of Pagan Europe Barnes amp Noble 1995 ISBN 0 7607 1210 7 Meaney Thomas The Return of The West New York Times March 11 2022 Merriman John Modern Europe From the Renaissance to the Present W W Norton 1996 ISBN 0 393 96885 5 McClellan James E III and Dorn Harold Science and Technology in World History Johns Hopkins University Press 1999 ISBN 0 8018 5869 0 Stein Ralph The Great Inventions Playboy Press 1976 ISBN 0 87223 444 4 Asimov Isaac Asimov s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology The Lives amp Achievements of 1510 Great Scientists from Ancient Times to the Present Revised second edition Doubleday 1982 ISBN 0 385 17771 2 Pastor Ludwig von History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources 40 vols St Louis B Herder 1898ff Walsh James Joseph The Popes and Science the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time Fordham University Press 1908 reprinted 2003 Kessinger Publishing ISBN 0 7661 3646 9 Reviews p 462 1 Stearns P N 2003 Western Civilization in World History Routledge New York Thornton Bruce 2002 Greek Ways How the Greeks Created Western Civilization Encounter Books Ferguson Niall Civilization The West and the rest Penguin Press 2011 ISBN 978 1 101 54802 8 Pinker Steven Enlightenment Now The Case for Reason Science Humanism and Progress Penguin Books 2018 ISBN 978 0 525 42757 5 Henrich Joseph The WEIRDest People in the World How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous Farrar Straus and Giroux 2020 ISBN 978 0374173227 Stark Rodney The Victory of Reason How Christianity Led to Freedom Capitalism and Western Success Random House 2006 ISBN 978 0812972337 Stark Rodney How the West Won The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity Intercollegiate Studies Institute 2014 ISBN 978 1497603257 Headley John M The Europeanization of the World On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy Princeton University Press 2007 ISBN 9780691171487Further readingBarzun Jacques From Dawn to Decadence 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present New York HarperCollins 2001 Hesmyr Atle Kultorp Civilization Its Economic Basis Historical Lessons and Future Prospects Telemark Nisus Publications 2020 External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Western culture An overview of the Western Civilization Archived 24 October 2021 at the Wayback Machine