section_path: Historical development of concept
section_name: Historical development of concept
paragraph_text: Historical development of concept
  
  The modern sense of individual personality is a result of the shifts in culture originating in the Renaissance, an essential element in modernity. In contrast, the Medieval European's sense of self was linked to a network of social roles: "the household, the Kinship network, the guild, the corporation – these were the building blocks of personhood". Stephen Greenblatt observes, in recounting the recovery (1417) and career of Lucretius ' poem De rerum natura: "at the core of the poem lay key principles of a modern understanding of the world." "Dependent on the family, the individual alone was nothing," Jacques Gélis observes. "The characteristic mark of the modern man has two parts: one internal, the other external; one dealing with his environment, the other with his attitudes, values, and feelings." Rather than being linked to a network of social roles, the modern man is largely influenced by the environmental factors such as: "urbanization, education, mass communication, industrialization, and politicization."