Western culture

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For this article's equivalent regarding the East, see Eastern culture
For the Henry Cow album of the same name, see Western Culture (album)
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, for many a symbol of the changes of the Western culture during the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, for many a symbol of the changes of the Western culture during the Renaissance

Western culture or Western civilization is a term used to refer to the cultures of the people of European origin and their descendants. It comprises the broad heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs (such as religious beliefs) and specific artifacts and technologies as shared within the Western sphere of influence. The term "Western" is often used in contrast to Asian, African, or Arab nations.

The East-West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic. In some ways it has grown out of use, or has been transformed or clarified to fit more precise uses. Though it is directly descendent from academic Orientalism and Occidentalism, the changing usage of the distinction "East-West" has come to be useful as a means to identify important cultural similarities and differences — both within an increasingly larger concept of local region, as well as with regard to increasingly familiar "alien" cultures.

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, respectively.

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[edit] Description

Classical definition of the Western world: Most of the depicted countries in blue were predominately influenced by Graeco-Roman culture and Christian and Enlightenment ideals and/or shaped by strong Western European immigration and settlement
Classical definition of the Western world: Most of the depicted countries in blue were predominately influenced by Graeco-Roman culture and Christian and Enlightenment ideals and/or shaped by strong Western European immigration and settlement
Socrates taught others via inquiry
Socrates taught others via inquiry
William Shakespeare, a major influence on modern Western literature.
William Shakespeare, a major influence on modern Western literature.

The concept of Western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, musical, and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. It applies to countries whose history is strongly marked by Western European immigration or settlement, and is not restricted to Western Europe. Much of this set of traditions is collected in the Western canon.

Various uses of the concept of Western culture have included, rightly or wrongly, critiques of American culture, materialism, industrialism, capitalism, commercialism, hedonism, imperialism, modernism, or the teaching of Western civilisation.

Other tendencies that define Western societies are the existence of political pluralism, prominent subcultures or countercultures (such as New Age movements), and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration.

[edit] Foundations

The origins of Western culture are often referred to as "three pillars": ancient Greece (concretely Greek philosophy), the Roman Empire (specifically Roman law), and Catholic and Protestant Christianity. Broadly, these foundations are referred to as Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. Germanic, Slavic and Celtic popular cultures also took part in the formation of the culture of medieval Europe, and the influence of secular humanism has been profound since the European Renaissance.

Western culture has developed many themes and traditions. Some important ones are:

[edit] History

Western culture is not homogeneous, nor unchanging. As with all other cultures it evolved and gradually changed with 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 soccer. 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, the other cultures of humanity.

The ancient Greek conception of science, philosophy, democracy, architecture, literature, and art provided a foundation embraced and built upon by the Roman Empire as it swept up Greece in its conquests in the 1st century BC. For five hundred years, the Roman Empire spread the Greek and Latin languages and Roman law across Europe, although it rejected the democratic concepts pioneered in ancient Athens. 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 civilisation after the fall of Rome. Also, Roman culture mixed with the pre-existing Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic cultures, which slowly became integrated into Western culture starting, mainly, with their acceptance of Christianity.

After the fall of Rome much of Greco-Roman art, literature, science and even technology were lost. Europe fell into political anarchy, with many warring kingdoms and principalities, and evolved into feudalism. However, much of the basis of the post-Rome 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 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.

The rediscovery of the Justinian Code in the early 10th century rekindled the West's passion for the discipline of law. Roman law became the foundation on which all legal concepts and systems were based, and 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, procedural justice, and democracy as the ideal form of society, and were principles which formed the basis of modern Western culture.

It actively encouraged the spreading of Christianity, which was inexorably linked to the spread of Western culture. Owing to the influence of Islamic culture —a culture that had preserved some of the knowledge of ancient Persia, Greece and Rome— in Moorish Spain and in the Levant during the Crusades, Western Europe rediscovered its Greek heritage in the 1300s, and the Renaissance was born. From the early 15th century to the early 17th century Western culture began to be spread throughout the world by intrepid explorers and missionaries in the Age of Discovery.

The architecture of the White House deliberately recalls ancient Greek temples.
The architecture of the White House deliberately recalls ancient Greek temples.


Japan has adopted some aspects of Western culture, whilst maintaining strong Japanese traditions.
Japan has adopted some aspects of Western culture, whilst maintaining strong Japanese traditions.

[edit] Influence of Western Culture

Elements of Western culture have had a very influential role on other cultures worldwide. People of many cultures, both Western and non-Western, equate "modernisation" with "westernisation," but many non-Westerners (and some Westerners) object to the implication that all societies should also adopt Western ideas and values. Some members of the non-Western world have suggested that this 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.

What is generally uncontested, is that much of the technology and social patterns which make up what is defined as "modernisation" 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). Therefore, the impact of "modernisation" and "modern" technology may not merely be "scientific" (that is, physical) but may possibly be closely linked with a certain culture, that of the West, such that without such technology, Western culture today would have been dramatically different from how it is known in actual historical and contemporary times.

[edit] Music, art, story-telling and architecture

Some cultural and artistic modalities are also characteristically Western in origin and form. While dance, music, 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. 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.

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 (with the possible exception, though isolated, of the Japanese Tale of Genji, five greats epics of Tamil and Persian Shahnama) 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 1930's, 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 the ionic column, 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 emphasising this characteristic, first developed in New York and Chicago, is the skyscraper.

Oil painting is said to have originated by Jan van Eyck, 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. 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.

[edit] Beyond art and politics

 The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.
Henry Ford popularized both mass production and his example of it: the Model T.
Henry Ford popularized both mass production and his example of it: the Model T.

Apart from food, literature, art, music, religion, and politics, many aspects of Western culture differ from other cultures around the world. Western culture has evolved and changed throughout the past centuries, but at the same time certain themes and trends persist to varying degrees:

Occidental marriage customs which are occasionally different in other cultures today are:

  • A strict legal requirement for monogamous and consensual marriage;
  • An occasionally casual attitude toward sex between unmarried persons;
  • An expectation of marriage as a source of personal fulfilment through romance, rather than as a practical domestic arrangement;
  • Reduced or no legal enforcement of social bans on adultery;

[edit] Western scientific and technological achievements

A recent 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. 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, electric motor, and electric light, and indeed most of the familiar electrical appliances, were inventions of the West. New communication devices and systems such as the telegraph, the telephone, fax, the transatlantic cable, radio and television, the communications and navigation satellites, mobile phones, the internet and the web can all be credited to the West.

Furthermore, ubiquitous materials such as concrete, aluminum, clear glass, synthetic rubber, synthetic diamond and the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene, among others, are all inventions of the West. Iron and steel ships, bridges and skyscrapers first appeared in the West. The transistor, integrated circuits, the memory chip, and computers were all first seen in the West. The pencil, ballpoint pen, CRT, LCD, LED, the photograph, photocopy, laser printer and plasma display screen were too. The ship's chronometer, the engine powered screw propeller, the locomotive, bicycle, automobile, and aeroplane were all invented in the West. Eyeglasses, the telescope, and 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, MRI, the birth control pill, and all the pure antibiotics were discovered 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 discovered by Westerners. The atom, nucleus, electron, neutron and proton were all unveiled by Westerners. Most of the elements, as well as the correct notion of elements themselves were discovered in the West. Nitrogen fixation and petrochemicals were achievements of Westerners.

Westerners are also known for their explorations of the globe and space. The first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth was by Westerners, as well as the first to set foot on the Poles, the first human in space and the first human to orbit the Earth and the first to land on the moon. The landing of robots on Mars and on an asteroid, and the Voyager explorations of the outer planets were all achievements of Westerners.

[edit] Contemporary Western culture

[edit] Differences

There are many differences between the most populous regions of the western culture, the United States and Western Europe. Religion has waned considerably in Western Europe. Many western Europeans are agnostic or atheist and nearly half of the populations of the United Kingdom (44-54%), Germany (41-49%), France (43-54%) and the Netherlands (39-44%) don't believe in a deity. The religiosity and the belief in a deity in the United States is still very strong, with 85-91% of the population believing in a deity.[1]

[edit] Similarities

Western countries are more developed than other countries in the world. This means that, compared to other cultures, a smaller percentage of society is poor. The richness of the majority of westerners result in freedom expressed in consumerism. Westerners have the ability to travel around the world, which they do en masse during holidays. Western countries tend to have low fertility rates relative to less developed countries, though this has not always been the case.

Western cultures tend to emphasise the individual, making them socially and politically individualistic, rather than collective. However, a number of Western nations are or have been economically collective. Democracy, which also favors the concept of individualism, is the preferred form of government in western society. Additionally, creativity and the expression of the individual is commonly encouraged in western societies so long it does not violate any social norms or established laws. Some forms of personal expression, violating rather minor folkways are most commonly accepted.[2] Furthermore, capitalism which is found in almost every western nation, supports an individualistic ideology. In western society consumer products are often meant to reflect upon their owner in addition to serving a utilitarian purpose. Everything from license plates, cell phone ring-tones, and kitchen sets can be custom tailored to meet the desires of each individual customer. Social critics have often pointed to high divorce rates and low amounts of civil activism as the negative externalities of individualistic societies.

Media in Western countries have paid much attention to disasters that happen around the world. Many Westerners are active in helping people around the world through charities or state intervention. The enormous amount of information, products, and subcultures leads to reduced adherence to ideologies. Cynicism has increased which can be exemplified by comedians and comedy shows like South Park and The Daily Show, and writers such as Michel Houellebecq.

Change is an important feature of Western culture. New subcultures, variations on dominant themes in politics, the arts, and technologies, constantly emerge and evolve. Tradition and authority are often viewed with suspicion, hopefully to be overwhelmed and improved by the next new thing.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Zuckerman, P. 2005. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns" Pitzer College. Retrieved: 2006-06-21.
  2. ^ Thompson, William; Joseph Hickey (2005). Society in Focus. Boston, MA: Pearson. 0-205-41365-X. 

[edit] References

  • Jones, Prudence and Pennick, Nigel A History of Pagan Europe Barnes & Noble (1995) ISBN 0-7607-1210-7.
  • 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.
  • 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 [2]

[edit] See also

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