The phrase “Western civilization” appears to have become common by the late 1800s. One study notes that it was being used without special explanation by at least 1890, while earlier 19th century English-language writers generally talked about “European civilization”. Previously, "Christendom" was the only widely used umbrella concept for centuries. 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 Near-Eastern 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.
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 or countries influenced by its legacy, should be counted as "Western" is an example of the term's ambiguity. This can be traced 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 the permanent split of the Roman Empire in 395 into Western and Eastern halves.
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 fundamental influences on Western culture – such as Greek philosophy – are shared by the Islamic world.[need quotation to verify] Appiah argues that the origin of the Western and European identity can be traced to the 8th-century Muslim invasion of Europe via Iberia, causing Christians 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.
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 European countries began to interact with Meiji Japan and Qing China 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. Stereotypical views of "the West" have been labeled "Occidentalism", paralleling "Orientalism"—the term for the 19th-century stereotypes of "the East".
Globalization has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all modern cultures are, to some extent, influenced by aspects of Western culture.
Phoenician mercantilism and the introduction of the alphabetical script boosted state formation in the Aegean and current-day Italy and Spain, spawning civilizations in the Mediterranean such as ancient Carthage, ancient Greece, Etruria, and ancient Rome.
While the concept of a "West" did not exist until 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.
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 in which the whole Mediterranean became essentially a Roman inland sea. The influence of Hellenism coexisted in the Empire with a cultural divide between a predominantly Latin-speaking West and Greek-speaking East. For about five hundred years, 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.
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 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.
Greek and Roman paganism was gradually replaced by Christianity, first with its legalization 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 replaced or competed with some secular authorities. The Jewish Christian tradition it had emerged from was all but extinguished, and antisemitism became entrenched in Christendom.
The birth of the European West during the Early Middle Ages
Europe c. 650 ADViking expansion in Europe between the 8th and 11th centuries: The yellow colour includes expansions of the Normans
In 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III, the first western Roman emperor since Romulus Augustus. The conflict-filled relationship between the Church and monarchs became the most important political fact of European history for the next 500 years. The stability of Charlemagne's reign stimulated a brief revival of cultural activity known as the Carolingian Renaissance. The earliest recorded concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simply a geographic term), comprising territories practicing Western Christianity was formed by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century during the reign of Charlemagne.
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, influencing all Western legal systems. The study of canon law, the legal system of the Catholic Church, fused with Roman law became the basis of the refounding of Western legal scholarship.[citation needed]
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which today has over 50,000 medical personnel, traces its origins to 1099 AD. The Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit, which at its height operated hundreds of hospitals across Europe, was founded in 1180 AD. Medieval hospitals were established to cater to "social groups marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age," according to the historian and vastly improved upon the Roman valetudinaria and Greek healing temples. Christianity also played a role in ending practices common among pagan societies, such as human sacrifice, slavery,[full citation needed] infanticide and polygamy.[full citation needed]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.
The 14th century Renaissance, starting from Italy and then spreading throughout Europe, was associated with a massive artistic, architectural and philosophical revival. Renaissance humanism advanced a worldview centered on nature and the importance of humanity, emerging from the study of classical antiquity and influencing philosophy and art for many years. In the following century, this process was enhanced by an exodus of Greek Christian priests and scholars to Italian cities such as Florence and Venice after the fall of Constantinople.
From a single print shop in Mainz, Germany around 1440, printing spread to more than 270 cities in Europe and produced more than 20 million volumes by the end of the 15th century. The technology ended the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, replacing it with a printing culture. At the same time, the number of universities exceeded 60.
By 1500 — two centuries before the Industrial Revolution and a century before the Scientific Revolution — Europe's technology and advanced political and economic organization "[gave] it a decisive edge over all other civilizations on earth." European navigators achieved the first circumnavigation of Earth at the beginning of the 16th century, including the first crossing of the Pacific. During the Age of Discovery, every continent except Antarctica was visited and mapped by Europeans.
Sparked by Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses (1517) and spread by the new movable typeprinting press in vernacular languages (i.e. not Latin), the Protestant Reformation was a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church hierarchy. As the movement branched into Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism, it triggered the Catholic Counter-Reformation and reshaped Europe’s political landscape. The upheaval of the Reformation exploded into nearly two centuries of religious wars — the most devastating European conflicts until the 20th century — and resulted in millions of deaths, especially in Germany, where over a third of the population perished from conflict, disease and famine.
Galileo reported in the Starry Messenger (1610) that he saw at least ten times more stars through the telescope than are visible to the naked eye.
Galileo Galilei’s early 17th-century telescopic observations began the transformation of what had been a narrowly technical revision of classical astronomy by Nicolaus Copernicus into an increasingly aggressive challenge to traditional cosmology and the long-standing synthesis of Aristotelian physics and Christian theology. The upheaval of the Scientific Revolution ended the medieval view of natural philosophy as secondary to theology. As natural philosophy grew in power and independence during the 17th century, European society began to dramatically change intellectual attitude — from fides quaerens intellectum to a new mode of understanding that was decoupled from religion. The "New Science" that emerged by the end of the century broke sharply with the natural philosophy that had preceded it, departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions, was more mechanistic in its worldview and more integrated with mathematics, and was obsessed with the acquisition and interpretation of new evidence.
During the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, cultural and intellectual forces in European society emphasized reason, analysis, and individualism rather than traditional authority. It challenged the authority of deeply rooted social institutions, such as the Catholic Church. Social reforms promoting toleration, science and skepticism became popular. Philosophers of the Enlightenment included John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire (1694–1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, who influenced society by publishing widely read works. Some rulers met with intellectuals and applied reforms, such as allowing for toleration, or accepting multiple religions, in what became known as enlightened absolutism. New ideas and beliefs spread around Europe, fostered by increased literacy made possible by an emergence of non-religious publishing. Notable publications include Encyclopédie (1751–72) edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) and Letters on the English (1733) by Voltaire.
Industrial Revolution
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.
During the Great Divergence, the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilization, eclipsing Qing China, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. European states colonized most of the planet; only thirteen present-day independent countries escaped formal colonization by European powers. There are many theories to explain the Great Divergence, including lack of government intervention, high bridging social capital, geography, colonialism, and customary traditions.
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This included transitions from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, more efficient water power, increased 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.
The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced. 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 while the Maddison Project argues that GDP per capita in Western Europe had diverged at least as early as 1400. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Economic historians agree that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history 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 adoption of steam transport (steam-powered railways, boats, and ships), large-scale manufacture of machine tools and increased use of machinery in steam-powered factories.
In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many Western countries, mostly in the European Union where most member states have experienced falling church attendance and membership. Secularism, the separation of 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. Mass media including 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 the transatlantic cable and radiotelephone played a decisive role in modern globalization. The West has contributed to Catholicism, Protestantism, democracy, industrialisation, and is the first major civilization to seek to abolish slavery during the 19th century.[citation needed]
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the definition of the Western Culture solidified around institutional membership in the European Union and NATO, which serve as the primary geopolitical and security anchors of Western identity. For Central European nations, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 represented a "return to Europe," reclaiming a historical identity rooted in Latin Christendom and Enlightenment values that had been suppressed during 42 years of Cold War. Historians like Samuel Huntington classify Russia as the "core state" of a distinct Orthodox civilization, separated from the West by a centuries-old cultural "fault line". Some scholars trace Russia's autocratic tradition to the Mongol conquest, which isolated Muscovy from Europe for centuries and ingrained a model of absolute, centralized power and collective submission that never existed in the West.
Contemporary consensus defines Western culture not just by geography, but by a commitment to liberal democratic governance, the rule of law, and collective security. Participation in these international organizations is widely viewed as the definitive marker of a state's alignment with Western values, emphasizing a shared responsibility for stability and human rights.
Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern Western musical notation to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church,[incomplete short citation] 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.[full citation needed]
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.
Restoration of a fresco from an Ancient Roman villa bedroom, circa 50–40BC, dimensions of the room: 265.4 × 334 × 583.9cm, 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, 77cm × 53cm, Louvre (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
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,(which however has been long been framed in Orientalist frameworks) and the Irish step dance are very well known Western forms of folk dance.
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.
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 Beowulf 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. 60CE) and the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (c. 1000CE) 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.
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.
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 447BC to 432BC, located in Athens, Greece.
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
Medieval 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.
Historians of science generally note that from the early modern period onward, scientific research in Europe became increasingly institutionalized, contributing to the development of modern scientific methods and technologies. 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 significantly shaped by the work of the 17th-century Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, with roots in the work of medieval scholars such as the 11th-century Iraqi physicistIbn al-Haytham and the 13th-century English friar Roger Bacon.
Several communication devices and systems such as the telegraph and telephone were developed or commercialized in Europe and North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ubiquitous materials were primarily discovered and developed in Europe and the United States. Iron and steel ships first appeared in the United Kingdom, and bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the United States. Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were invented in Germany.
In mathematics, many modern formal frameworks—such as calculus, statistics, logic, vectors, tensors, complex analysis, group theory, abstract algebra, and topology—were developed and systematized primarily in Europe during the early modern and modern periods, building on earlier contributions from ancient Greek, Indian, Islamic, and other mathematical traditions. In biology, several foundational theories of modern biology—including evolution, genetics, chromosomes, the structure of DNA, and the methods of molecular biology—were developed primarily in Europe and North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, drawing on earlier global traditions in natural history and medicine. In physics, major modern theories such as mechanics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, relativity, and quantum mechanics were formulated chiefly within European scientific institutions, while incorporating insights from earlier scientific traditions worldwide. Key discoveries made by European scientists 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 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 Western countries.
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 realized, 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).
The native religions of Europe were polytheistic but not homogeneous – 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 respectively. According to Scholars, in 2017, Europe's population was 77.8% Christian (up from 74.9% 1970), these changes were 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.
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
A 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.
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 alphabet, used by the majority of Europe, Greek alphabet, used in Greece. 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.
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).
↑Hanson, Victor Davis (2007). Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN978-0-307-42518-8. 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. ISBN978-0-14-029323-4. 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. ISBN978-0-19-157783-3. 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. ISBN978-0-19-923743-2. 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 & Littlefield. ISBN978-0-7425-6780-1. 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 influence.
↑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. ISBN978-0-521-52929-7. 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 (2nded.), Cambridge University Press, p.450, doi:10.1017/chol9780521234474.018, ISBN978-0-521-23447-4, 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.
↑Green, P. (2008). Alexander The Great and the Hellenistic Age. Phoenix. p.xiii. ISBN978-0-7538-2413-9.
↑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. ISBN978-9004234765.
↑Hengel, Martin (2003). Judaism and Hellenism: studies in their encounter in Palestine during the early Hellenistic period. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. ISBN978-1-59244-186-0.
↑Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2016). Western Civilization: A Brief History, Volume I: To 1715 (Cengage Learninged.). Cengage Learning. p.156. ISBN978-1-305-63347-6.
↑Neill, Thomas Patrick (1957). Readings in the History of Western Civilization, Volume 2 (Newman Pressed.). p.224.
↑Rousseau, Philip (2017). "Inheriting the fifth century: Who bequeathed what?". In Allen, Pauline; Jeffreys, Elizabeth (eds.). The Sixth Century: End or Beginning?. Brill. pp.2–3, 5. ISBN978-1-86420-074-4.
12Burnett, 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. ISBN0-299-11880-0. OCLC19353503.
12Rüegg, 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, ISBN0-521-36105-2, pp. xix–xx.
↑Cf. Jeremy Waldron (2002), God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK), ISBN978-0-521-89057-1, pp. 189, 208.
↑McNeill, William H. (2010). History of Western Civilization: A Handbook (University of Chicago Pressed.). University of Chicago Press. p.204. ISBN978-0-226-56162-2.
↑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.
↑Hero (1899). "Pneumatika, Book ΙΙ, Chapter XI". Herons von Alexandria Druckwerke und Automatentheater (in Greek and German). Translated by Wilhelm Schmidt. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. pp.228–232.
↑Gordon, Cyrus H., The Common Background of the Greek and Hebrew Civilizations, W. W. Norton and Company, New York 1965.
↑Nicholls, William (1995). Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (1st Jason Aronson softcovered.). Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson. ISBN978-1-56821-519-8. OCLC34892303.
↑Gager, John G. (1983). The origins of anti-semitism: attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-503607-7. OCLC9112202.
↑Cameron, Averil (1993). "Urban changes and the end of Antiquity: The changing city". The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395–600. Routledge. pp.159ff. ISBN978-0415014212.
↑Gilian Clark, Late Antiquity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2011), pp. 1–2.
↑Ballan, Mohammad (2010). "Fraxinetum: An Islamic Frontier State in Tenth-Century Provence". Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 41: 23–76. doi:10.1353/cjm.2010.0053. S2CID144048972. By 939 the Andalusis had managed to cross the Alps and raided what is today northern Italy as well as southern Switzerland, where they attacked the renowned monastery of St. Gall. They established numerous fortresses—which Latin chroniclers in the raided regions all called Fraxinetum or some variation of the name (Frassineto, Frascendello, etc.) - thus facilitating their domination of Provence and the Rhone Valley. From their principal base at Fraxinetum, the Muslims extended their raids into Alemannia and Rhaetia in the North, Grenoble in the West, and Lombardy in the East...It was during the period of its control of the Alpine passes that Fraxinetum reached its peak, and the raids by the Andalusis became the most destructive and deadly; according to Latin chroniclers, the Muslims sacked numerous monasteries and indiscriminately killed hundreds of pilgrims on their way to Rome.
↑McEvedy, Colin (1980) [1961]. The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p.50. ISBN0-14-070822-7. The Viking and Moslem marauders had already been active for a century when the Maygars arrived in Europe, but it was only then that the misery of Christendom became complete. Forced out of Russia by the Patzinaks (893), the Maygars occupied Hungary...Then their horsemen turned to raiding that was as rapid, widespread and savage as that of the sea-borne pirates. The unhappy condition of the West at that time is well shown in the history of Burgundy, a state which would appear to be comparatively inaccessible, but which within half a century was raped by Viking, Moslem, and Magyar in turn.
↑Henrich, Joseph Patrick (2020). The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (1sted.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p.57. ISBN978-0-374-17322-7. ...the medieval Catholic Church inadvertently altered people's psychology by promoting a peculiar set of prohibitions and prescriptions about marriage and the family that dissolved the densely interconnected clans and kindreds in western Europe into small, weak and disparate nuclear families. The social and psychological shifts induced by this transformation fueled the proliferation of voluntary associations, including guilds, charter towns, and universities, drove the expansion of impersonal markets, and spurred the rapid growth of cities. By the High Middle Ages, catalyzed by these ongoing changes, WEIRDer ways of thinking, reasoning, and feeling propelled the emergence of novel forms of law, government, and religion while accelerating innovation and the emergence of Western science.
↑Sanjay Kumar (2021). A Handbook of Political Geography. K.K. Publications. pp.125–127. A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: "Europa" figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.
↑Jacques Verger (16 October 2003). "Patterns". In Hilde de Ridder-Symoens; Walter Rüegg (eds.). A History of the University in Europe. Vol.1, Universities in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press. p.35. ISBN9780521541138. It is no doubt true that other civilizations, prior to, or wholly alien to, the medieval West, such as the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Islam, or China, were familiar with forms of higher education which a number of historians, for the sake of convenience, have sometimes described as universities. Yet a closer look makes it plain that the institutional reality was altogether different and, no matter what has been said on the subject, there is no real link such as would justify us in associating them with medieval universities in the West. Until there is definite proof to the contrary, these latter must be regarded as the sole source of the model which gradually spread through the whole of Europe and then to the whole world.
↑Dawson, Christopher; Glenn Olsen (1961). Crisis in Western Education. CUA Press. p.25. ISBN978-0-8132-1683-6.
↑Febvre, Lucien; Martin, Henri-Jean (1976). The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800. London: New Left Books. Quoted in: Anderson, Benedict. Comunidades Imaginadas. Reflexiones sobre el origen y la difusión del nacionalismo. Fondo de cultura económica, Mexico, 1993. ISBN978-968-16-3867-2. pp. 58f.
↑Wootton, David (2015). The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. p.282. ISBN978-0-06-175952-9. ...a manuscript culture, in which experience is unspecific, indirect, and amorphous...a print culture, in which experience is specific, direct, documented and retrievable...In comparison to the world of print, manuscript culture is one of rumour and gossip. The printing press represents an information revolution, and secure facts are its consequence.
↑Grant, Edward (2007). "Conclusion". A History of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. p.324. ISBN978-052-1-68957-1. With the establishment of the universities of Paris, Oxford and Bologna by 1200, the institutional foundation was laid within which the essential attributes for the development of modern science could take root...By 1500, there were approximately sixty-four active universities spread across Europe from Cracow in the East to Lisbon in the West; from Uppsala in the North to Catania in the South...For the first time in history, a large number of scholars with similar training in natural philosophy, and therefore with a reasonable level of contemporary scientific knowledge, were absorbed into the broader reaches of European society.
↑Hollister, C. Warren (2005). Medieval Europe: A Short History (10thed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education. ISBN0-07-295515-5. Europe's technology and political and economic organization had given it a decisive edge over all other civilizations on earth. Columbus had discovered America; the Portuguese had sailed around Africa to India; Europe had developed the cannon, the printing press, the mechanical clock, eyeglasses, distilled liquor, and numerous other ingredients of modern civilization.
↑Woodward, David (2007). The History of Cartography, Volume Three: Cartography in the European Renaissance. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN978-0226907338.
↑Grant, Edward (2007). "The Relations between Natural Philosophy and Theology". A History of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. p.241. ISBN978-052-1-68957-1. ...Christians developed the concept that philosophy and science are 'handmaids to theology'... Augustine strongly urged Christians not to seek secular knowledge for its own sake but to take only what is useful for a better understanding of scripture...The handmaiden theory of secular knowledge also tended to emphasize the role of authorities, from the divine Scriptures themselves to the church fathers who had interpreted Scripture. The handmaiden tradition remained strong in Western Europe up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, during the period when natural philosophy was relatively weak.
↑Applebaum, Wilbur (2005). The Scientific Revolution and the Foundations of Modern Science. Greenwood Guides to Historic Events, 1500–1900. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. pp.7, 113–114. ISBN978-0-313-32314-0. Natural philosophy had long been perceived as a handmaiden to theology, which was called the "queen of the sciences." It was now coming to be thought as independent of theological constraints, with its own methods, functions, and purposes different from those of religion...Traditional conceptions of natural philosophy as a handmaid to religion were transformed in the course of the seventeenth century. Some challenged the new scientific outlooks for...denying the truth of Scripture. The new natural philosophers answered by denying the validity of literal interpretations of certain passages in the Bible, which were written to appeal to the common understanding of ordinary people...Centuries earlier St. Augustine had said the function of the Bible was not to teach us about nature. Galileo, Kepler, and others held that the Book of Nature was not designed to prepare us for salvation. They urged that natural philosophy and theology should be seen as distinct areas with their own methods and criteria, and that their practitioners should not intervene in one another's provinces.
↑Wootton, David (2015). The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. pp.6–11. ISBN978-0-06-175952-9. ...let us take for a moment a typical well-educated European in 1600...He believes in witchcraft...He believes Circe really did turn Odysseus's crew into pigs. He believes mice are spontaneously generated in piles of straw...He believes that nature abhors a vacuum. He believes the rainbow is a sign from God and that comets portend evil...He believes, of course, that the earth stands still and the sun and stars turn around the earth once every twenty-four hours...But now let us jump far ahead [to 1733]...He does not know anyone (or at least not anyone educated and reasonably sophisticated) who believes in witches, magic, alchemy or astrology; he thinks the Odyssey is fiction, not fact....He knows that the rainbow is produced by refracted light and that comets have no significance for our lives on earth. He believes that the future cannot be predicted. He knows that the heart is a pump...He believes that science is going to transform the world and that the moderns have outstripped the ancients in every possible respect. He has trouble believing in miracles, even the ones in the Bible...Between 1600 and 1733...the intellectual world of the educated elite changed more rapidly than at any time in previous history...The only name we have for this great transformation is 'the Scientific Revolution'.
↑Principe, Lawrence M. (2011). "Introduction". Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.1–3. ISBN978-0-199-56741-6.
↑Lindberg, David C. (1990). "Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Baker to Butterfield: A preliminary sketch". In Lindberg, David C.; Westman, Robert S. (eds.). Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (1sted.). Chicago: Cambridge University Press. pp.1–26. ISBN978-0-521-34262-9.
12Lindberg, David C. (2007). "The legacy of ancient and medieval science". The Beginnings of Western Science (2nded.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp.357–368. ISBN978-0-226-48205-7.
↑Del Soldato, Eva (2016). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Archived from the original on 11 December 2019. Retrieved 1 June 2018.
↑Grant, Edward (2007). "Transformation of medieval natural philosophy from the early period modern period to the end of the nineteenth century". A History of Natural Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.274–322. ISBN978-052-1-68957-1.
↑Gal, Ofer (2021). "The New Science". The Origins of Modern Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp.308–349. ISBN978-1316649701.
↑Bowler, Peter J.; Morus, Iwan Rhys (2020). "The scientific revolution". Making Modern Science (2nded.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp.25–57. ISBN978-0226365763.
↑Wootton, David. The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (Penguin, 2015). p. 136. ISBN0-06-175952-X.
↑Sootin, Harry. "Isaac Newton." New York, Messner (1955).
↑Watt steam engine File: located in the lobby of into the Superior Technical School of Industrial Engineers of the UPM (Madrid).
↑Marcin Solarz, The Language of Global Development. A Misleading Geography. (2014), p. 18.
↑Feinstein, Charles (September 1998). "Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution". Journal of Economic History. 58 (3): 625–58. doi:10.1017/s0022050700021100. S2CID54816980.
↑Szreter, Simon; Mooney, Graham (February 1998). "Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation of Life at Birth in Nineteenth-Century British Cities". The Economic History Review. 51 (1): 104. doi:10.1111/1468-0289.00084. hdl:10.1111/1468-0289.00084.
↑Mumford, Lewis (1963) [1934]. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. p.3. ISBN978-0-15-688254-5. While people often call our period the "Machine Age," very few have any perspective on modern technics or any clear notion as to its origins. Popular historians usually date the great transformation in modern industry from Watt's supposed invention of the steam engine; and in the conventional economics textbook the application of automatic machinery to spinning and weaving is often treated as an equally critical turning point. But the fact is that in Western Europe the machine had been developing steadily for at least seven centuries before the dramatic changes that accompanied the "industrial revolution" took place. Men had become mechanical before they perfected complicated machines to express their new bent and interest; and the will-to-order had appeared once more in the monastery and the army and the counting-house before it finally manifested itself in the factory. Behind all the great material inventions of the last century and a half was not merely a long internal development of technics: there was also a change of mind. Before the industrial processes could take hold on a great scale, a reorientation of wishes, habits, ideas, goals was necessary.{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
↑Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., p. 27 ISBN0-349-10484-0.
↑Robert Lucas Jr. (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 2007. Retrieved 10 July 2016. [consider] annual growth rates of 2.4 percent for the first 60 years of the 20th century, of 1 percent for the entire 19th century, of one-third of 1 percent for the 18th century.
↑Taylor, George Rogers (1951). The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN978-0-87332-101-3. No name is given to the transition years. The "Transportation Revolution" began with improved roads in the late 18th century.
↑Judt, Tony (2005). Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN978-1-59420-065-6.
↑Appel, Hilary; Orenstein, Mitchell A. (2018). From triumph to crisis: neoliberal economic reform in postcommunist countries. Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-108-42229-1.
↑Huntington, Samuel P. (2003). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. The New York Times Bestseller (1. Simon & Schuster paperbacked.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-84441-1.
↑Longbottom, David; Lawson, Alison (2016). Alternative Market Research Methods: Market Sensing. Florence: Taylor and Francis. ISBN978-1-317-55038-9.
↑Lane, Stewart F. (2011). Jews on Broadway: an historical survey of performers, playwrights, composers, lyricists and producers. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN978-0-7864-5917-9. OCLC668182929.
↑Jones, John Bush (2003). Our musicals, ourselves: a social history of the American musical theater. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, published by University Press of New England. ISBN978-1-61168-223-6. OCLC654535012.
↑Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (2010). Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching. W.W. Norton & Company. p.39. ISBN978-0-393-70607-9. Alhazen (or Al-Haytham; 965–1039 CE) was perhaps one of the greatest physicists of all times and a product of the Islamic Golden Age or Islamic Renaissance (7th–13th centuries). He made significant contributions to anatomy, astronomy, engineering, mathematics, medicine, ophthalmology, philosophy, physics, psychology, and visual perception and is primarily attributed as the inventor of the scientific method, for which author Bradley Steffens (2006) describes him as the "first scientist".
↑Fermi, Enrico (December 1982). The First Reactor. Oak Ridge, Tennessee: United States Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Technical Information. pp.22–26.
↑Weber, Johannes (2006). "Strassburg, 1605: The Origins of the Newspaper in Europe". German History. 24 (3): 387–412 (387). doi:10.1191/0266355406gh380oa.:
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.
↑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. ISBN9781139484138. ..for the Jews in twentieth-century Europe, the cradle of Christian civilization.
↑D'Anieri, Paul (2019). Ukraine and Russia: From Civilied Divorce to Uncivil War. Cambridge University Press. p.94. ISBN9781108486095. ...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. ISBN9780141954714. Europe is historically the cradle of Christian culture, it is still the primary center of institutional and pastoral energy in the Catholic Church...
↑Rietbergen, Peter (2014). Europe: A Cultural History. Routledge. p.170. ISBN9781317606307. Europe is historically the cradle of Christian culture, it is still the primary center of institutional and pastoral energy in the Catholic Church...
↑"Europe". Pewforum.org. 19 December 2011. Archived from the original on 4 January 2012. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
1234"Discrimination in the EU in 2012"(PDF), Special Eurobarometer, 393, European Union: European Commission, p.233, 2012, archived from the original(PDF) on 2 March 2020, 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.
↑William Joseph Baker, Sports in the western world (University of Illinois Press, 1988).
↑David G. McComb, Sports in world history (Routledge, 2004).
↑Barbara Schrodt, "Sports of the Byzantine empire." Journal of Sport History 8.3 (1981): 40–59.
↑Sall E. D. Wilkins, Sports and games of medieval cultures (Greenwood, 2002).
↑Tranter, N. L. "Popular sports and the industrial revolution in Scotland: the evidence of the statistical accounts." International Journal of the History of Sport 4.1 (1987): 21–38.
↑G. Koenig, Harold (2009). Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry. Cambridge University Press. p.31. ISBN9780521889520. 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.
↑Burnside, Jonathan (2011). God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. Oxford University Press. p.XXVI. ISBN9780199759217.
↑V. Reid, Patrick (1987). Readings in Western Religious Thought: The ancient world. Paulist Press. p.43. ISBN9780809128501.
Hunter, Louis C. (1985). A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1730–1930. Vol.2: Steam Power. Charlottesville, US: University Press of Virginia.
Jones, Prudence and Pennick, Nigel (1995). A History of Pagan Europe Barnes & Noble. ISBN0-7607-1210-7.
Landes, David. S. (1969). The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. p.92. ISBN0-521-09418-6.
Walsh, James Joseph (2003). [Reprinted from 1908, Fordham University Press ed.]. The Popes and Science; the History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN0-7661-3646-9. (Reviews: p. 462).
Further reading
Ankerl, Guy (2000). Global communication without universal civilization. INU societal research. Vol.1: Coexisting contemporary civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN978-2-88155-004-1.
Ankerl, Guy (2000). Coexisting Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU Press. pp.119–244. ISBN2-88155-004-5.
Asimov, Isaac (1982). Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology: The Lives & Achievements of 1510 Great Scientists from Ancient Times to the Present. Revised second ed. Doubleday. ISBN0-385-17771-2.
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