The figure of Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) stands apart in the history of German and world thought. Spengler single-handedly rethought accepted views on human evolutionary development: he opposed the linear description of history as endless, unstoppable progress. Instead, he proposed a concept of cyclical development, according to which new cultures emerge, flourish, and then undergo periods of decline and collapse. Each such cycle lasts approximately a thousand years, and each culture possesses distinctive characteristics that shape human thought and action. The very title of the work contains the thesis substantiated in the book: at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Spengler, Western culture entered a period of decline. The first volume of the book, published in 1918, brought the author great renown and sparked heated debate. This work had a significant influence on sociologists Arold Joseph Toynbee, Pitirim Sorokin, and José Ortega y Gasset.