: Can I assign actions to broad concepts? Whenever I write, I run into the problem where I have to assign human actions to subjects that, when I contemplate about it, cannot realistically perform

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Two things:

There is a term in Philosophy called Fallacy
Philosophers and Creative Writers don't always see eye to eye.

To address the first matter: I'm not a professional philosopher, but I'm pretty sure that your teacher has introduced you to one of the fallacies. There's a list of 224 of the most common ones on this page of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I'm not entirely sure which of the fallacies this is, but here's the bumph from Wikipedia about the scientific interpretation of the (entertainingly named) Pathetic Fallacy:

In science, the term "pathetic fallacy" is used in a pejorative way in
order to discourage the kind of figurative speech in descriptions that
might not be strictly accurate and clear, and that might communicate a
false impression of a natural phenomenon. An example is the
metaphorical phrase "Nature abhors a vacuum", which contains the
suggestion that nature is capable of abhorring something. There are
more accurate and scientific ways to describe nature and vacuums.

Another example of a pathetic fallacy is the expression, "Air hates to
be crowded, and, when compressed, it will try to escape to an area of
lower pressure." It is not accurate to suggest that air "hates"
anything or "tries" to do anything. One way to express the ideas that
underlie that phrase in a more scientific manner can be found and
described in the kinetic theory of gases: effusion or movement towards
lower pressure occurs because unobstructed gas molecules will become
more evenly distributed between high- and low-pressure zones, by a
flow from the former to the latter.

Now, I'm not saying that your examples fall within the Pathetic Fallacy, but there are certainly some points of convergence. Maybe one of the others fits more closely, but I'll leave you to explore for yourself.

To address my second point: you've inserted this question into a Writing Community, and so you'll find answers here that focus on aspects of writing. For a writer, anthropomorphic language, metaphors and similes are bread and butter. (And no, not literally - but that goes towards my point.)

In this space, you will find a whole host of arguments to support the use of the kind of language used in your first set of examples. Again, I'll let you explore those at your leisure, but you'll find that, on the whole creative-writers are not professional philosophers and so might well disagree with them as to whether it's 'proper' to use such language.

Perhaps your teacher was approaching the matter from a philosophical/fallacy point of view and so was maybe correct in terms of that arena. But now that you are, yourself, grown up, you can put away those limitations and live freely as a writer.

In other words: go forth and use language fully, wildly and with exuberant excess. And if anyone tells you that you can't - feel free to laugh and carry on regardless.

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Absolutely you can.

If anything, your examples are assuming too narrow a definition of the verb, not too broad a definition of the subject.

"can science perform an action like helping?"

What does it mean to "perform" the "action" that is helping? If I help you think of a word, or I help you answer this question, am I doing the same thing as if I help you change a tyre, or help you get out of a chair? All "helping [obj] to [verb]" means is "making it easier for [obj] to [verb]". If science makes it easier for you to understand nature, abracadabra, it helped.

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Inanimate objects and ideas certainly CAN act in some ways.

Take your first sentence, "Science helps us understand nature." Of course it does. Just because science is not a person doesn't mean that it can't serve a purpose. Inanimate objects still do things. It is completely accurate to say, "The airplane flew across the sky" or "The door swung open". Ideas can have effects. Like "science" in your example.

Now if you said, "Science likes mathematical formulas", that is anthropomorphizing. "Science" doesn't have feelings, it doesn't like one thing and hate another. Still, people say things like this all the time. Often, like here, it's just a shorthand way to say something that would require a long or awkward sentence to describe literally. Sometimes we mean it in a poetic, metaphorical way. "My computer is plotting against me." Of course the speaker doesn't think that his computer literally hates him and is malfunctioning because it wants to hurt his feelings. (He probably doesn't really think that, anyway.) But it's a cute way to say that he's having problems with his computer.

There's nothing wrong with anthropomorphizing. Of course like any literary technique, it can be done poorly, be overused, etc. I suppose that if you do it in a way that sounds like you're being literal, it could come across as silly.

But if all writing was limited to the strictly literal, it would be a lot more boring. Which is more interesting to read:

One: "My new girlfriend is like a cuddly little kitten. I love to watch her run as she chases a dream across the sun-kissed field and the wind whips her hair about her face."

Two: "My new girlfriend is lovable. I have a positive psychological response to watching her run. The sun is bright today and the wind velocity is higher than average."

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The first approach is accurate, the second approach is wrong:

1a. Science helps us understand nature, vs.
1b. People who do science help us understand nature.

Science, in general (I am a scientist) does help us understand nature. But not all people that do science help us understand nature, some people that do science are frauds, some are seeking wealth and do not intend to share their knowledge. 1a is more accurate.

Can science perform an action like helping? Yes, of course. A step ladder can help me reach a high book shelf. Science IS understandings of how things work, from protozoans to galaxies, of course those understandings help us understand nature.

2a. Western culture pursues worldwide equality.
2b. The people of Western culture pursue worldwide equality.

Again, not all people of Western culture do this, a large percentage are only out for themselves, some would literally return to the days of legalized slavery. (2b) is an over generalization that just isn't true.

Can Western culture perform an action like pursuing? Presumably, a culture can be pursuing something; it is composed of people that can come to some consensus. More than other cultures, the people of Western cultures have a consensus that equality is a good thing; but I wouldn't go so far as to say they actively pursue it, most seem to just hope it happens. But that is a quibble; cultures can take actions and pursuit is one of them. Wall Street culture pursues profit.

3a. That company seeks to promote a product.
3b. The people of that company seek to promote a product.

Again, 3b is not accurate, most people in that company have other jobs, only a few in the marketing department actively seek to promote their products. Others are focused on accounting, payroll, hiring, engineering, programming, janitorial work, purchasing, receiving, manufacturing, shipping, etc.

Can that company perform actions such as seeking and promoting? Sure, the company is an entity in itself, composed of people, and in this case an explicitly thinking entity, organized to pursue objectives.

The key to all these examples is understanding how people use and understand words. "Help" does not have to be a physical action; the amorphous "Science" helps us understand nature because we read and understand the work and explanations of other people. Those scientists helped us, but not actively in person, their recorded understandings helped us, and we call those recorded understandings "science."

A culture is much the same; a collection of principles, beliefs and rules subscribed to by a body of people. Those could translate into a belief that positive action should be taken and rules made to eliminate inequalities whenever they are discovered or creep into their society, a culture like that could be characterized as pursuing equality. I just wouldn't say Western culture holds those beliefs.

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Your teacher is quite wrong, I believe. "People who do science" don't help you with anything. Maybe one of them sits down and explains things to you, but another is this unfriendly power-hungry schmuck who abuses students and sticks his name on top of their findings, while yet another falsifies experiment results in order to publish. It is Science, as a methodology (the scientific method), as a way of thinking, as a corpus of knowledge, that helps you understand nature.

Similarly, not all people in Western culture might pursue worldwide equality, and not all people in a company necessarily seek to promote their product. Those are generalisations, and as such, almost necessarily wrong.

It is a concept, a culture, a company, a state that do the things you mention. Companies and states are legal entities, they are thus responsible for their actions. In all cases, and that is, I think, the key to your questions, the whole is larger than the sum of its parts. The unifying concept is bigger than the sum of people united under it, and a particular person might in fact not be a good representative of the unifying concept. In fact, sometimes the concept is an ideal, to which the people can only aspire, and other times each person can only contribute a small part to the whole. (For example, a scientist in all his career might add no more than a small drop of knowledge to the vast ocean of science.)

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