Western culture
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{{Original research|date=May 2009}} {{pp-move-indef}} {{two other uses||this article's equivalent regarding the East|Eastern culture|the Henry Cow album of the same name|Western Culture (album)}}File:Da Vinci Vitruve Luc Viatour.jpg|thumb|200px|
Leonardo da Vinci's
Vitruvian Man, for many a symbol of the changes of the Western culture during the
RenaissanceRenaissance File:Platon-2b.jpg|thumb|200px|
Plato along with
Socrates and
Aristotle were founding members of
Western philosophyWestern philosophyWestern culture (sometimes equated with
Western civilization or European civilization) refers to
cultures of
European origin. The term "Western culture" is used very broadly to refer to a
heritage of
social norms,
ethical values,
traditional customs,
religious beliefs,
political systems, and specific
artifacts and
technologies. Specifically, Western culture may imply:
*a
Graeco-Roman Classical and
Renaissance cultural influence, concerning artistic, philosophic, literary, and
legal themes and traditions, the cultural social effects of
migration period and the heritages of
Celtic,
Germanic,
Slavic and other ethnic groups, as well as a tradition of
rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by
Hellenistic philosophy,
Scholasticism,
Humanisms, the
Scientific Revolution and
Enlightenment, and including, in
political thought, widespread
rational arguments in favour of
freethought,{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}
human rights,{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}
equality{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}} and
democratic{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}} values averse to
irrationality and
theocracy.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}
*a
Biblical-
Christian cultural influence in spiritual thinking, customs and either ethic or moral traditions, around
Post-Classical Era.
*
European cultural influences concerning artistic, musical, folkloric, ethic and oral traditions, whose themes have been further developed by
Romanticism.
The concept of western culture is generally linked to the
classical definition of the
Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of
literary,
scientific,
political,
artistic and
philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the
Western canon.
(1)The term has come to apply to countries whose
history is strongly marked by European immigration or settlement, such as
the Americas, and
Australasia, and is not restricted to Western Europe.
Central Europe is also regarded as an original constituent of Western culture.
(2)(3)Some tendencies that define modern Western
societies are the existence of
political pluralism, prominent
subcultures or
countercultures (such as
New Age movements), increasing cultural
syncretism resulting from
globalization and
human migration.
Terminology
{{See|Western world}}File:GodfreyKneller-IsaacNewton-1689.jpg|thumb|right|200px|
Isaac Newton discovered
universal gravitation and
the laws of motion.]]From its very beginnings in
Mesopotamia and
Ancient Greece the East-West distinction has been somewhat difficult to define with precision. The Greeks were not so different from their
Eastern neighbors for example. In the
Middle Ages, where
Islam was contrasted to the West, it is notable that most of the Islamic Middle East, having - since the time of
Alexander the Great - been Hellenized, ruled by Rome and Constantinople and part of the Orthodox communion, was as much under the influence of
Byzantine and
Biblical-Christian history as "
Christendom".In the later
20th to early
21st century, with the advent of increasing
globalism, it has become more difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category, and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as
relativistic and arbitrary.
(4)(5)(6)Globalism has, especially since the end of the
cold war, spread western ideas so widely that almost all modern countries or cultures are to some extent influenced by aspects of western culture which they have absorbed. Recent stereotyped Western views of "the West" have been labelled
Occidentalism, paralleling
Orientalism, the term for the 19th century stereotyped views of "the East".Geographically, "
The West" today would normally be said to include
Europe as well as the overseas territories belonging to the
Anglosphere, the
Hispanidad,
Lusosphere or
Francophonie.{{-}}
History
{{further|
History of Western civilization}}{{histphil}}Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all other cultures it has evolved and gradually changed over time. All generalities about it have their exceptions at some time and place. The organisation and tactics of the Greek
Hoplites differed in many ways from the
Roman legions. The
polis of the Greeks is not the same as the American
superpower of the 21st century. The
gladiatorial games of the
Roman Empire are not identical to present-day
football. The art of
Pompeii is not the art of
Hollywood. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of
humanity.The origins of the word "West" in terms of geopolitical boundaries started in the 1800s and 1900s. Prior to this, most people would have thoughts about different nations, languages, individuals, and geographical regions, but with no idea of "Western" nations and culture as some of us think today. Many world maps were so crude, inaccurate, and not well known before the 1800s that specific geographical and political differences would be harder to measure. Few would have access to good maps and even fewer had access to accurate descriptions of who lived in far away lands. Western thought as we think of it recently, is shaped by ideas of the 1800s and 1900s, originating mainly in Europe. What we think of as Western thought today is generally defined as Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and colonialism. As a consequence the term "Western culture" is at times unhelpful and vague, since the definition involved a vast variety of distinct traditions, political groups, religious groups, and individual writers over thousands of years.Furthermore, "Western culture" has taken many of its elements from neighboring areas in the Middle East and North Africa. Europe (whose borders are arbitrary) is an area geographically connected to Asia (forming Eurasia) and Africa, and important cultural exchanges such as trade and migration take place. {{-}}
The Classical West
File:Colosseum-exterior-2007.JPG|thumb|The
Colosseum in
RomeRomeThe Classical West was Graeco-Roman/Celtic/Germanic Europe.In
Homeric literature, and right up until the time of
Alexander the Great, for example in the accounts of the
Persian Wars of
Greeks against
Persians by
Herodotus, we see the
paradigm of a contrast between the West and East. Nevertheless the Greeks felt they were civilized and saw themselves (in the formulation of
Aristotle) as something between the wild
barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Easterners. Inspired by Eastern example, and yet felt to be different, ancient Greek
science,
philosophy,
democracy,
architecture,
literature, and
art provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the
Roman Empire as it swept up Europe, including the
Hellenic World in its conquests in the 1st century BC. In the meantime however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, and part of an
empire. The idea that the later
Orthodox or
Eastern Christian cultural descendants of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman empire, are a happy mean between Eastern slavishness and Western barbarism is promoted to this day, for example in Russia, creating a zone which is both Eastern and Western depending upon the context of discussion.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. Although Rome, like Greece, was no longer democratic, the idea of democracy remained a part of the education of citizens, as if the emperors were a temporary emergency measure. Eventually the empire came to be increasingly officially split into a Western and Eastern part, reviving old ideas of a contrast between an advanced East, and a rugged West.With the rise of Christianity in the midst of the Roman world, much of Rome's tradition and culture were absorbed by the new religion, and transformed into something new, which would serve as the basis for the development of Western civilization after the fall of Rome. Also, Roman
culture mixed with the pre-existing
Celtic,
Germanic and
Slavic cultures, which slowly became integrated into Western culture starting, mainly, with their acceptance of Christianity.
The Medieval West
File:Image-Charlemagne-by-Durer.jpg|thumb|right|upright|
CharlemagneCharlemagne
The Medieval West was at its broadest the same as
Christendom, including both the "Latin" or "Frankish" West, and the Orthodox Eastern part, where Greek remained the language of empire. More narrowly, it was Catholic (Latin) Europe. After the crowning of
Charlemagne, this part of Europe was referred to by its neighbors in Byzantium and the Moslem world as "Frankish".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, centered around
Italy, and
Gaul (
France). However, this would become the centre of a new West. Europe fell into political anarchy, with many warring kingdoms and principalities. Under the Frankish kings, it eventually reunified and evolved into
feudalism. Much of the basis of the post-Roman cultural world had been set before the fall of the Empire, mainly through the integrating and reshaping of Roman ideas through Christian thought. The Greek and Roman
paganism had been completely replaced by
Christianity around the 4th and 5th centuries, since it became the official State religion following the baptism of emperor
Constantine I.
Roman Catholic Christianity and the
Nicene Creed served as a unifying force in
Western Europe, and in some respects replaced or competed with the secular authorities. Art and literature, law, education, and politics were preserved in the teachings of the Church, in an environment that, otherwise, would have probably seen their loss. The
Church founded many
cathedrals,
universities,
monasteries and
seminaries, some of which continue to exist today. In the
Medieval period, the route to power for many men was in the Church.In a broader sense, the
Middle Ages, with its tension between Greek
reasoning and
Levantine monotheism was not confined to the West but also stretched into the old East, in what was to become the
Islamic world. Indeed the debate between these two streams of thought which is said to define the west was preserved best there for a while, with Greek
literature, and even some Eastern
theology, making their way back to Western Europe via
Spain and
Italy.The rediscovery of the
Justinian Code in the early 10th century rekindled a passion for the discipline of law, which crossed many of the re-forming boundaries between East and West. Eventually, it was only in the
Catholic or
Frankish west, that
Roman law became the foundation on which all legal concepts and systems were based. Its influence can be traced to this day in all Western legal systems (although in different manners and to different extents in the
common (Anglo-American) and the
civil (continental European) legal traditions). 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. The ideas of
civil rights,
equality before the
law,
equality of women,
procedural justice, and
democracy as the ideal form of
society, and were principles which formed the basis of modern Western culture.The West actively encouraged the spreading of
Christianity, which was inexorably linked to the spread of Western culture. Owing to the influence of
Islamic culture and
Islamic civilization — a culture that had preserved some of the knowledge of ancient
Mesopotamia,
Egypt,
India,
Persia,
Greece, and
Rome— in
Islamic Spain and
southern Italy, and in the
Levant during the
Crusades, Western Europeans translated many
Arabic texts into Latin during the Middle Ages. Later, with the
fall of Constantinople and the
Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire, followed by a massive exodus of Greek Christian priests and
scholars to Italian towns like
Venice, bringing with them as many scripts from the Byzantine archives as they could, scholars' interest for the
Greek language and classic works, topics and lost files was revived. Both the Greek and Arabic influences eventually led to the beginnings of the
Renaissance. From the late 15th century to the 17th century, Western culture began to spread to other parts of the world by intrepid explorers and missionaries during the
Age of Discovery, followed by
imperialists from the 17th century to the early 20th century.{{-}}
The Modern Era
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File:Zeche Mittelfeld Ilmenau.jpg|thumb|right|upright|The
Industrial RevolutionIndustrial Revolution(File:World 1910.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Western empires in 1910)Coming into the
modern era, the historical understanding of the East-West contrast - as the opposition of
Christendom to its geographical neighbours - began to weaken. As religion became less important, and Europeans came into increasing contact with far away peoples, the old concept of Western Culture began a slow evolution towards what it is today. The
Early Modern "
Age of Discovery" in the
15th,
16th and
17th centuries faded into the "
Age of Enlightenment" continuing into the
18th, both characterized by the military advantages coming to
Europeans from their development of
firearms and other
military technologies. The "
Great Divergence" became more pronounced, making the West the bearer of
science and the accompanying revolutions of
technology and
industrialisation. Western political thinking also eventually spread in many forms around the world. With the early
19th century "
Age of Revolution" the West entered a period of
World empires, massive economic and technological advance, and bloody international conflicts continuing into the
20th century.Religion in the meantime has waned considerably in Western Europe, where many are
agnostic or
atheist. Nearly half of the populations of the
United Kingdom (44-54%),
Germany (41-49%),
France (43-54%) and the
Netherlands (39-44%) are non-theist. However, religious belief in the United States is very strong, about 75-85% of the population,
(7) as also happens in most of Latin America. As Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The Islamic world which had formerly been considered "the
Orient" ("the East") more specifically became the "
Near East" as the interests of the European powers for the first time interferred with
Qing China and
Meiji Japan in the 19th century.
(8) Thus, the
Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the "
Far East", while the troubles surrounding the
decline of the Ottoman Empire simultaneously occurred in the "Near East".
(9) The "
Middle East" in the mid-19th century included the territory east of the Ottoman empire but West of China, i.e.
Greater Persia and
Greater India, but is now used synonymously with "Near East".
The Cold War West
File:Aldrin Apollo 11.jpg|thumb|left|upright|
Apollo 11Apollo 11File:Atom bomb test 1951.jpg|thumb|right|upright|An
atom bombatom bomb{{Expand section|date=February 2010}}During the
Cold War, the West–East contrast became synonymous with the competing governments of the
United States and the
Soviet Union and their allies.{{-}}
Politics
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2009}}File:European flag outside the Commission.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The
European UnionEuropean UnionDespite the Western empires in the past, concepts of democracy and an emphasis on freedom has been seen as distinguishing Western peoples from non-western neighbors.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}}In the Middle Ages and early modern times, the concept of a
separation of Church and state developed, allowing for the development of more distinctive political norms, such as the doctrine of the
separation of powers, which make modern Western democracy distinct from democracy in general.In comparison to many other cultures in the world, western cultures tend to emphasize the
individual. Much of this respect for difference and individual liberties remain, however, still theoretical, in many ways, among mainstream society, when the individual factor encounters a strong opposition from social customs and consensus, and thus resists to be accepted or understood. This situation, has tended to change among most progressive sectors of society, as a consequence of the many social and counter-cultural movements that the last decades have come to see. Creativity and the expression of the individual is commonly encouraged in Western culture. New subcultures, art and technology constantly emerge. Furthermore, capitalism which is found in almost every western country, supports a highly individualistic ideology. The forms of government usually adopted in western societies, as a part of a wider, nowadays ruling social-economical
liberal capitalist structure, are multi-party
parliamentary or
presidential (also '
congressional') systems, frequently referred to as
figurative democracy, which favors some sort of majority consensus when coming to adopt collective decisions.{{-}}
Widespread Influence
File:Whitehouse north.jpg|left|thumb|The architecture of the
White HouseWhite HouseElements of Western culture have had a very influential role on other cultures worldwide. People of many cultures, both Western and non-Western, equate
modernization (adoption of technological progress) with
westernization (adoption of Western culture). Some members of the non-Western world have suggested that the link between technological progress and certain harmful Western values provides a reason why much of "modernity" should be rejected as being incompatible with their vision and the values of their societies. These types of argument referring to
imperialism and stressing the importance of
freedom from it and the
relativist argument that different cultural norms should be treated equally, are also present in Western philosophy. Also
Marxism, sometimes seen as an alternative to Western culture, comes from the West.What is generally uncontested, is that much of the technology and social patterns which make up what is defined as "modernization" were developed in the
Western world. Whether these technological and social patterns are intrinsically part of Western culture, is more difficult to answer. Many would argue that the question cannot be answered by a response from
positivistic science and instead is a "value" question which must be answered from a value system (e.g. philosophy, religion, political doctrine). Nonetheless, much of anthropology today has shown the close links between the physical environment and daily activities and the formation of a culture (the findings of
cultural ecology, among others).{{-}}
Music, art, story-telling and architecture
{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2010}}File:Vatican City at Large.jpg|thumb|right|upright|
Saint Peter's BasilicaSaint Peter's BasilicaFile:First Folio.jpg|thumb|upright|left|
Western literature.
William Shakespeare's
First FolioFirst FolioFile:Mona Lisa.jpeg|thumb|right|upright|Western Art. The Mona LisaMona LisaFile:Swanlake001.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Classical music, opera and ballet. Swan lakeSwan lakeFile:Elvis presley.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Pop music. Elvis PresleyElvis PresleyFile:Sears Tower ss.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Skyscrapers. Willis TowerWillis TowerSome cultural and artistic modalities are also characteristically Western in origin and form. While dance, music, visual art, story-telling, and architecture are human universals, they are expressed in the West in certain characteristic ways. The symphony has its origins in Italy. Many important musical instruments used by cultures all over the world were also developed in the West; among them are the violin, piano, pipe organ, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, and the theremin. The solo piano, symphony orchestra and the string quartet are also important performing musical forms.The ballet is a distinctively Western form of performance dance.(10) The ballroom dance is an important Western variety of dance for the elite. The polka, the square dance, and the Irish step dance are very well-known Western forms of folk dance.Historically, the main forms of western music are European folk, choral, classical, Country, rock and roll, hip-hop, and Electronica.While epic literary works in verse such as the Mahabarata and Homer's Iliad are ancient and occurred worldwide, the novel as a distinct form of story telling only arose in the West (11) in the period 1200 to 1750. Photography and the motion picture as a technology and as the basis for entirely new art forms were also developed first in the West. 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 twentieth century.The arch, the dome, and the flying buttress as architectural motifs were first used by the Romans. Important western architectural motifs include the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic columns, and the Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, and Victorian styles are still widely recognised, and used even today, in the West. Much of Western architecture emphasises repetition of simple motifs, straight lines and expansive, undecorated planes. A modern ubiquitous architectural form that emphasizes this characteristic is the skyscraper, first developed in New York and Chicago. Oil painting is said to have originated by Jan van Eyck, and perspective drawings and paintings had their earliest practitioners in Florence.(12) 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. In Western dance, music, plays and other arts, the performers are only very infrequently masked. There are essentially no taboos against depicting God, or other religious figures, in a representational fashion.Many forms of popular music have been derived from African-Americans' folklore and music during 20th and 19th centuries, initially by themselves, but later played and further developed together with White Americans, British people, and Westerners in general. These include Jazz, Blues and Rock music (that in a wider sense include the Rock and roll and Heavy metal genres), Rhythm and blues, Funk, Rap, Techno as well as the Ska and Reggae genres from Jamaica. Several other related or derived styles were developed and introduced by western pop culture such as Pop, Metal and Dance Music.{{-}}Scientific and Technological Inventions and Discoveries
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A feature of Western culture is its focus on science and technology, and its ability to generate new processes, materials and material artifacts.It was the West that first developed steam power and adapted its use into factories, and for the generation of electrical power. [citation needed] 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 in Chicago (1942). The electrical dynamo, transformer, and electric light, and indeed most of the familiar electrical appliances, were inventions of the West. Communication devices and systems including the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, communication and navigation satellites, mobile phone, and the Internet were all invented by Westerners. The pencil, ballpoint pen, CRT, LCD, LED, photograph, photocopier, laser printer, ink jet printer and plasma display screen were also invented in the West. Furthermore, ubiquitous materials including concrete, aluminum, clear glass, synthetic rubber, synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and polystyrene were 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, and computer were all first seen in the West. The ship's chronometer, the screw propeller, the locomotive, bicycle, automobile, and aeroplane 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, NMR, x-rays, and light, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopy, were all first developed and applied in Western laboratories, hospitals and factories.
In medicine, vaccination, anesthesia, and all 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 that ancient scourge, 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. So were the stethoscope, 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 utilised 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.In mathematics, calculus, statistics, logic, vector, tensor and complex analysis, group theory and topology were developed by Westerners. In biology, evolution, chromosomes, DNA, genetics and the methods of molecular biology are creatures 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), the first electric motor (1821), Ohm's Law (1827), and the Maxwell's equations (1871). The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners. In finance, double entry bookkeeping, the limited liability company, life insurance, and the charge card were all first used in the West.Westerners are also known for their explorations and adventures of the globe and space. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth (1522) was by Westerners, as well as the first to set foot on the South Pole (1911), and the first human to land on the moon (1969). The landing of robots on Mars (2004) and on an asteroid (2001), and the Voyager explorations of the outer planets (Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989) were all achievements of Westerners.Examples
File:Susquehanna steam electric station.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Power stations and factoriesfactoriesFile:Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 2 cropped.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Automobiles and trainstrainsFile:Several mobile phones.png|thumb|right|upright|TelecommunicationsTelecommunications File:Olympic flame at opening ceremony.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Codified sports. 2004 Athens Olympics2004 Athens OlympicsWestern culture has developed many themes and traditions, the most significant of which are:
- Greco-Latin classic letters, arts, architecture, philosophical and cultural tradition, that include a large and vast influence of very important and preeminent authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Herodotus, Cicero or Caesar, as well as a very long mythologic tradition (approximately syncretic to other Mediterranean ones such as Phoenician or Egyptian).
- Catholic and Protestant Christian cultural tradition, as well as part of Christian theology and philosophy, and an abundant tradition on the philosophical discipline of ethics.
- Secular humanism, rationalism and Enlightenment thought, as opposed to traditionally preeminent Catholicism and Protestant Christianity, religious and moral doctrines in lifestyle. Though such opposition has not fully ended, it 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 laicism, agnosticism, materialism and atheism.
- A tradition and idea of importance of law which has its roots in both Roman law and the Bible.
- Widespread usage of terms and specific vocabulary borrowed, based or derived from Greek and Latin roots or etymologies for almost any field of arts, science and human knowledge, becoming easily understandable and common to almost any European language, and being a source for inventing internationalized neologisms for nearly any purpose. It is not rare for full loan Latin phrases or expressions, such as in situ, grosso modo or tempus fugit, to be in usage, many of them giving name to artistic or literatic concepts or currents. The usage of such roots and phrases is standardized in giving official scientific names for biological species (such as Homo sapiens or Tyrannosaurus rex). This shows a reverence for these languages, called classicism.
- Generalized usage of some form of the Latin or Greek alphabet. The latter includes the standard cases of Greece and other derived forms, such as Cyrillic, the case of those Slavic Eastern countries of Christian Orthodox tradition, historically under the Byzantine and later Russian czarist or Soviet area of influence. Other variants of it are encountered for Gothic and Coptic alphabets, that historically substituted older scripts, such as Runic, and Demotic or Hieroglyphic systems.
- Scholasticism.
- Renaissance arts and letters.
- The Western canon.
- 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 heritaged from Romanticism, and to some extent Modernism, Surrealism and related vanguards.
- Several subcultures (sometimes deriving into urban tribes) and countercultural movements, such as hippie lifestyle or New Age, that have left several influences on contemporary mainstream or subcultural tendencies (some of them, especially in the mainstream, can become merely aesthetic).
- Different currents of utopian and scientific socialist ideas, that has developed and evolved into all a world tradition of activism and critic theories against current model of unjust, class-divided, unequalitary societies. Being an expression of it revolutionary ideologies of high repercussion in modern times such as Republicanism, Utopian Socialism, Unionism, Anarchism, Marxism, Guevarism and New Left, among others.
See also
Books:
Notes
-
[Duran 1995, p.81]
-
[weblink]
-
[Jerzy Kłoczowski, Actualité des grandes traditions de la cohabitation et du dialogue des cultures en Europe du Centre-Est, in: L'héritage historique de la Res Publica de Plusieurs Nations, Lublin 2004, pp. 29–30]
-
[Yin Cheong Cheng, New Paradigm for Re-engineering Education. Page 369]
-
[Ainslee Thomas Embree, Carol Gluck, Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching. Page xvi]
-
[Kwang-Sae Lee, East and West: Fusion of Horizons]
-
[Zuckerman, P. 2005. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns" Pitzer College. Retrieved: 2006-06-21.]
-
[JOURNAL, Davidson, Roderic H., Where is the Middle East?, Foreign Affairs, 38, 665–675, 1960, ]
-
[British 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 the Ottoman lands, the entire Arabian Peninsula, and western parts of Iran.]
-
[Barzun, p 329]
-
[Barzun, p. 380]
-
[Barzun, p 73]
References
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- BOOK, Ankerl, Guy, Global communication without universal civilization, 2000, INU societal research, Vol.1: Coexisting contemporary civilizations : Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western, INU Press, Geneva, 2-88155-004-5, 2000,
- Barzun, Jacques From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present HarperCollins (2000) ISBN 0-06-017586-9.
- Merriman, John Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present W. W. Norton (1996) ISBN 0-393-96885-5.
- 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.
- Eduardo Duran, Bonnie Dyran Native American Postcolonial Psychology 1995 Albany: State University of New York Press ISBN 0791423530
- 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 & 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, Fordam University Press, 1908, reprinted 2003, Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 0-7661-3646-9 Reviews: P.462 weblink
Further reading
- Stearns, P.N. (2003). Western Civilization in World History. New York: Routledge.
Západní kulturaΔυτικός πολιτισμόςLänsimainen kulttuuriCivilisation occidentaleתרבות המערב西洋文明Westerse cultuurCywilizacja łacińskaCultura ocidentalVästerländsk kulturמערב וועלט西方文化
- content above as imported from The Pseudopedia
- "Western culture" does not exist on GetWiki
- time: 5:15pm EDT - Sun, Mar 14 2010