Interesting, I’ve heard two claims the past couple of days about the person with the greatest influence on Western Civilization.
Martin Luther.
Alexander the Great
I can see how an argument can be made for Luther. Luther’s challenge to the Catholic church and the debates between Catholics and Protestants continue to this day.
Alexander the Great was mentioned because without his spread of Greek culture, the Western world would be vastly different today.
I think I’m going to go a bit more recent and pick George Washington.
Without Washington the general, the American Revolution would have failed.
Without Washington the president, the American nation would have failed.
I think it’s Reagan. Without his anti-tax crusade education funding wouldn’t have been cut and people might grow up understanding what Western Civilization is.
If you’re looking for one, single person, I think it’s hard to say. But you should keep Gutenberg in mind. Time-Life Magazine chose his printing press as the most important invention of the 2nd Millennium.
I think you missed my sarcasm. Washington is much too recent, and way too US specific to be the person that most influenced Western Civilzation.
The US and French revolutions stood on the shoulders of The Enlightenment, so at the least you would include Voltaire, Rosseau and the other Enlightenment philosophers.
I’m going to disagree on this one. Alexander spread Greek culture east. But it was earlier Greek trade and colonization west that had the big impact on western civilization. Most of Alexander’s Hellenizing ( and that of his successors ) gradually faded out in the ensuing few centuries. It was a big impact, but I don’t think our world would be vastly different without it.
How about Augustus Caesar? He essentially built the Roman Empire and did such a good job that it kept running for over a thousand years. And for a lot of that time, the Empire was Western Civilization.
Martin Luther seems a streach as well. Their were a lot of similar figures floating around at the same time period, and a lot of Princes and Kings looking for an excuse to break the Vatican’s power. I imagine that someone else would’ve sparked the Reformation even if Luther done his thing.
Since woman never get represented in these things, I’ll go with Lise Meitner, the discoverer of Nuclear Fission. Like Luther, if she hadn’t done it, someone else would have. But unlike Luther, the timing of the idea she’s know for was important. If someone else had made the same discovery, but a few years earlier, the European countries might’ve started WWII with nuclear weapon programs already well underway. A few years later, and the US might’ve not built the bomb before the end of the war, and then decided to try it out on the Communists in N. Korea or Eastern Europe instead.
I don’t think it ran very well for those 1000 years. And really, it was forced to split in two, with the Western half going tits-up and the Eastern half transforming into the Byzantine Empire, a different empire, really. But if we count that empire as the Roman Empire, well it lasted until the 1500’s or so (off the top of my head)
I think dalej42 is trying to eliminate “steam engine time” type discoveries. If the state of the art is such that any number of people could have invented moveable type, then it is inevitable that someone will invent it.
I tend to agree, I think. I would only apply influential to one of a kind people, whose role could not have been filled by anyone else.
Actually, the northern and eastern assaults on the Empire caused its fall, and therefore the Dark Ages. The Church both kept knowledge alive AND kept it to herself- not causing the Dark Ages, but not overthrowing them either.
Granted, that the previous posts are perhaps more relevant than mine, but here goes:
Ahem… The Beatles influenced modern 20th century culture in a major way. They influenced everything from hairstyles, to language, to dress, to recreational drug use, to film making, and quite obviously invented and changed popular music in an unprecedented manner. Unprecedented? Well maybe Elvis had some claim to that, but there’s a HUGE difference between say, Heartbreak Hotel and Strawberry Fields Forever.
The Beatles changed western society. No doubt about it.
What about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?