The growth of large scale agriculture and factories had huge economic and social impacts; peasants came to work in factories, and the population gradually increased in the 18th century due to improved climate and diet, then it exploded in the 19th century. Industrialization led to record levels of material wealth for some Europeans; however, wealth was never equally distributed and poverty still remained in society due to capitalism’s periodically crashing markets and low, unchanging work wages. …show more content…
Europe’s economic inequality and subsequent instability in the 19th century led people to think about the roles evolving nations played in their citizens’ economic lives, and they developed ideas such as socialism and Marxism as a result of these thoughts. Two world wars and the Great Depression had a devastating impact on Europe, transforming economic patterns and complicating the government’s role in the unstable economy; Soviet Russia and nations in Central and Western Europe represented two of the ways this issue was dealt with. Consumerism took on even more importance, and a movement towards economic unity and a common currency began. Though most Europeans learned about the world through religion, an increasing number began to rely on philosophical and scientific inquiry instead. As a result, science began to be seen as an objective source of truth about the world. The Enlightenment made people accept that the world was governed by natural laws, and created a new understanding of the universe and systems to organize bodies of knowledge. Intellectuals and activists attempted to use a scientific approach to questions about reform, leading to the development of new philosophies, which artists commented on in their depictions of European life. New theories in the 19th century questioned the supremacy of reason, discovering objective truths rather than subjective interpretations of reality, and non-rational forces. Many European intellectuals favored relative and subjective paradigms over those that were absolute, creating a conflict between science and subjective approaches to knowledge; Europeans continued to regard scientific results as having universal value, while postmodern thinkers took the individual component into account for