Early 20th Century Society and Culture

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Early 20th Century Society and Culture
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A Culture of Uncertainty

• Trends that had begun in the pre-war years
  continued after World War I
• The culture of progress what replaced with a
  culture of uncertainty, irrationalism and the
  surreal.
• In all areas of culture and the sciences, the
  accepted values of the late 19th century came
  into question.

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Study of the Mind

• Sigmund Freud
• Emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind
  in determining human behavior.
• Human behavior is largely irrational.
• Freud developed psychoanalysis to treat patients
  neuroses (behaviors caused by suppression of
  unconscious drives)

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Study of the Mind

• Carl Jung
• Jung built upon Freuds ideas and applied them to
  society as a whole.
• Promoted the idea of collective unconsciousness
  that influenced society as a whole.

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Literature

• Britain
• George Bernard Shaw
• Know for witty plays
• James Joyce
• Stream of consciousness
• H.G. Wells
• Science fiction
• D.H. Lawrence
• Sexually-explicit novels
• Aldous Huxley
• Distopia
• T.S. Eliot
• Playwright who wrote about the barrenness of
  modern life.

H.G. Wells
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Literature

• Germany
• Thomas Mann
• Works dealt with sickness of modern civilization
• Franz Kafka
• Dealt with the alienation of the modern man
• Hermann Hesse
• Also dealt with the themes of isolation and
  alienation

Franz Kafka
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Visual Arts

• Cubism
• Cubism explored the limits of art
• First fully modern art style.
• Pablo Picasso was its originator and most famous
  participant.

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Picasso - Guernica
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Visual Arts

• Dada
• Artistic movement that put on noisy exhibitions.
• Showed the irrational and complex nature of
  modern life.
• Focused on the absurd.

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Visual Arts

• Expressionism
• Flourished in Germany in the years prior to World
  War I
• Emphasized the free expression of emotion in
  painting

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Philosophy

• Futurism
• Movement centered in Italy but spread to the rest
  of Europe.
• Called the radical changes that focused the
  remaking of society.
• Pointed out irrationalism of modern society and
  how it needed to be changed focusing on the
  possibilities of technology.

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Philosophy

• Oswald Spengler
• Looked at society as a biological organism that
  had its own life cycles.
• In The Decline of the West he believed that
  Europe was in its death cycle.

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Sciences

• Albert Einstein
• Developed the theories of General and Special
  Relativity.
• Destroyed the Newtonian world view.
• Showed that the universe was not as it appeared.

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Sciences

• Max Planck
• Developed the theories of quantum physics.
• Energy and matter are not all that different.
• Was incorporated into Einsteins theory of
  General Relativity (Emc2

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Sciences

• Werner Heisenberg
• Developed the principle of uncertainty.
• The process of observing matter affects its speed
  and position.
• Confirmed the uncertainty of the universe.