Well I got sucked back in. This reply seemed more sincere so I'll be less snarky this time.
It's on you to prove an assertion. If all you do is declare your conclusion and stop there, "no" is the limit of the counterargument required.
No one is proving anything or citing any sources in this argument. Why did this standard suddenly come up now? We are stating opinions with rationalizations, the only one coming remotely close to "proving" anything is me by providing links.
Poland had no colonies, the major contributors to modern science and the philosophy of humanism are mostly European and entirely not Middle-Eastern but less than half of Europe makes the list even by the most generous of definitions (that don't also include most of the rest of the world), and there were places outside of Europe that industrialized faster than the eastern segments. Most notably the United States, but a number of Latin American cultures got a leg up in that race over the more remote parts of Europe.
You don't need be a performer to participate in the culture. Did Poland have colonies? No. Were polish people highly active in European colonies? Yes. More Importantly, did Polish people smoke tobacco, and benefit from other new world goods. Yes, when they could. Did Poland try to colonize? Yes! The same argument goes for science, not producing great scientist doesn't mean they weren't contributing, benefiting or trying. As for Industrialization, the Americas are considered Western Culture (that's why the term gets used broadly by the way).
"Modern" has no exact definition. Defining the modern era as post-medieval is the most common, so it's the one I defaulted to.
If you're arguing with someone about culture, you should probably default to the cultural studies definition of modern.
Iceland, Albania, Armenia, Greece counts unless you're willing to be super generous with the definition and include the academies of the philosophers, in which case any institution dedicated primarily to academia counts and Europe is no longer even the originator of the idea, Liechtenstein is kind of a cheap shot because it's tiny, if we want to get really technical the Vatican still doesn't have a university, and so on.
Greece was under Ottoman occupation for the enlightenment, if they had had a pre-modern university it would have counted as an Ottoman one. Notice how they established the University of Athens shortly after achieving independence. Similarly Albania and Armenia were under Ottoman occupation. Thanks for validating my point. Iceland was a far off inhospitable colony during this era, that's like saying Alaska doesn't have a Major League Baseball stadium and thus isn't American.
Literally the very first sentence:
Literally read the rest of the article. Broadly means that Western Culture now inhabits the Americas and Australia, the latter of which isn't Western at all. I chose it because I thought it did a great job of showing how many influences (foreign or not) over a long period of time leads to a shared experience among of group of people. Of course cultures assimilate things from foreign cultures. Here's a more straightforward one for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Europe
I'm getting the sense that you're a STEM type of person, probably an engineer or mathematician. You seem to apply boolean logic far beyond its effective reach and have a sort of annoying overconfidence when doing so. Culture isn't binary. It's completely acceptable to say that Italy shares a Mediterranean culture with North Africa and other parts of the Middle-East, and at the same time is also a part of European culture that excludes half of the Mediterranean. Of course the definition of "European Culture" is Tautological to a degree. The entire point is finding the commonality of groups of people. Europe, including Italy, has a very large and distinct set of cultural traits that it flat out doesn't share with the Middle-East. End of story.