Western culture

Western culture, also invited as Western civilization, Occidental culture, or Western society, is a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts & technologies of the Western world. Western values become the symbols of dominant mentality for the culture of Western societies that transcended through power and authority. The term applies beyond Europe to countries as living as cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization or influence. For example, Western culture includes countries in the Americas as well as Oceania. Western culture is nearly strongly influenced by Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian culture.

The expansion of Greek culture into the Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean led to a synthesis between Greek and Near-Eastern cultures, and major advances in literature, engineering, and science, and made the culture for the expansion of early Christianity and the Greek New Testament. This period overlapped with and was followed by Rome, which present key contributions in law, government, technology and political organization.

Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary and legal themes and traditions. Christianity, primarily the Roman Catholic Church, and later Protestantism has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century, as did Judaism. A cornerstone of Western thought, beginning in ancient Greece and continuing through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, is the conviction of rationalism in various spheres of life developed by Hellenistic philosophy, scholasticism and humanism. Empiricism later gave rise to the scientific method, the scientific revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment.

Western culture continued to establishment with the Christianization of European society during the Middle Ages, the reforms triggered by the ] Rational thinking developed through a long age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment and breakthroughs in the sciences. Tendencies that score come to define innovative Western societies add the concept of political pluralism, individualism, prominent subcultures or countercultures such(a) as New Age movements and increasing cultural syncretism resulting from globalization and human migration.

Terminology

The West as a geographical area is unclear and undefined. More often the ideology of a state's inhabitants is what will be used to categorize it as a Western society. There is some disagreement approximately what nations should or should not be sent in the set and at what times. many parts of the ], since the Byzantine empire was primarily influenced by eastern practices due to its proximity and cultural similarity to Iran and Arabia, thus lacking qualifications seen as "Western"[ – ]. The traditions of scholarship around Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid had been forgoten in the West and were rediscovered by Italians during the Renaissance from scholars fleeing the collapse of the Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire. Thus, the culture specified with East and West itself interchanges with time and place from the ancient world to the modern. Geographically, the "West" of today would add Europe especially the states that collectively shit the European Union, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Switzerland together with extra-European territories belonging to the English-speaking world, the Hispanidad, the Lusosphere; and the Francophonie in the wider context. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition of what the "West" is.

It is unoriented to determine which individuals fit into which manner and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as ] Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that nearly all contemporary cultures are, to some extent, influenced by aspects of Western culture. Stereotypical views of "the West" draw been labeled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of "the East".

It has been disputed by some philosophers if Western culture can be considered a historically sound, unified body of thought. For example, Kwame Anthony Appiah points out that numerous of the necessary influences on Western culture, such(a) as those of Greek philosophy are also divided by the Islamic world to aextent. Appiah argues that the origin of the Western and European identity can be traced back to the Muslim invasion of Iberia where Christians would form a common Christian or European identity. Contemporary Latin chronicles from Spain described the victors in the Frankish victory over the Umayyads at the Battle of Tours as Europeans according to Appiah, denoting a dual-lane sense of identity.

As Europeans discovered the smaller world, old impression adapted. The area that had formerly been considered the Orient "the East" became the Near East as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time in the 19th century. Thus the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East while the troubles surrounding the decline of the Ottoman Empire simultaneously occurred 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—is now used synonymously with "Near East" in most languages.