The picture of the world is a construct of people's sociocultural life. The concept of a cultural picture of the world
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Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
State Academic University of Humanities
Essay
in the discipline "cultural studies"
" Cultural picture of the world"
Completed by: Krapivina Ekaterina Igorevna
Head: Saiko E.A.
Moscow, 2016
Introduction
Culture in itself general view is a product of the joint life activity of people, a system of ways of their collective existence, ordered norms and rules for satisfying group and individual needs. Its emergence is due to the fact that when people live together for a long time in the same territory, their collective economic activity forms in them a common worldview, a common way of life, a manner of communication, etc. All together, these signs determine the national culture of the community.
Each national culture, formed in certain conditions of its existence (climatic, historical, social), develops its own vision of the world. The vision of the world recorded in culture is a cultural picture of the world.
If the world is the environment and a person in interaction, then the cultural picture of the world is the result of the processing of information about the environment by the human consciousness. Every phenomenon of the world exists in the human mind in the form of an image, knowledge about it and attitude towards it.
The cultural picture of the world influences many factors: natural and climatic, historical, social, public. It changes under the influence of processes that occur in society, in science and education.
The primary picture of the world represents intuitive ideas, meanings and meanings as an expression of the characteristics of a particular culture. Moreover, each meaning always reflects the universality of the world in which people live.
Each period of historical time has its own picture of the world. For example, the picture of the world of the ancient Indians is not similar to the picture of the world of medieval knights, and the picture of the world of knights is not similar to the picture of the world of their contemporaries, monks.
At the same time, it is possible to identify a universal picture of the world that is characteristic of all humanity, although it will be too abstract. Thus, all people are characterized by the opposition of white and black, but for some groups white will correspond to the positive principle - life, and black - to the negative principle - death, and for others (for example, the Chinese) it is the other way around. Any nation will have its own idea of good and evil, norms and values.
An individual's picture of the world will be determined, first of all, by his character: for a sanguine extrovert and a realist, the picture of the world will be clearly opposite to the picture of the world of an autistic person. The picture of the world will change with altered states of consciousness.
Man immersed in virtual reality, will also see the world completely differently.
Thus, the picture of the world is mediated by cultural language, which is spoken by this group.
History of cultural understanding.
The cultural picture of the world is revealed as a concrete historical system of worldviews and attitudes, including a set of both rational-conceptual and sensory-figurative ways of perceiving and comprehending the world.
The cultural picture of the world is a totality inherent to the people or the historical community of ideas about time and space, the origin of the world and man, the meaning of human life and death, relationships between people, good and evil, justice, beauty, freedom, happiness, etc.
In the history of European and Russian culture, three basic cultural pictures of the world were consistently formed - mythological, religious and scientific. With all the originality of mythologies and religions different nations their ideas about the world had something in common, determined by the common knowledge of the universe, the laws that give rise to the world and operate in it.
For mythological picture of the world Characteristic is the idea of a close, inextricable connection between man and nature, of uniform laws governing the life of the world and man. The forces of nature in the mythological picture of the world have the same properties as people - they act consciously, purposefully, any natural event is addressed to man. The world in mythology is a living organism in which everything - people, animals, birds, mountains, rivers, and gods - are subordinate elements unified system, one supreme law. Mythological picture the world's oldest. All the peoples of the earth had their own mythology and unique cultures different countries and peoples is largely determined by it.
Religious picture of the world based on mythological. First religious beliefs almost indistinguishable from myths. Its originality becomes obvious with the emergence of monotheistic religions - religions of a single god. The God of a monotheistic religion (Jehovah, Buddha, Christ, Allah) is a personified supreme power, absolute, all-encompassing and united. The world was created by His will; He establishes all the laws of existence, nature and man. At the same time, God creates man different from other living beings, endowing him with mind and soul. He carries within himself part of the divine power and is free to subjugate nature. The special position of man in the world, determined by his divine soul, is the most important difference religious painting peace. Religion has a strong influence on mentality, and it should also be noted that even an unbeliever who grew up in a certain cultural tradition, perceives the world through the prism of national religion. It is fixed in language, customs, art, morality, and at the same time it forms an important part of the life of society, even being formally prohibited, as it was in Soviet times.
Scientific picture of the world formed in Europe in the modern era - in the 17-18 centuries. This does not mean that scientific knowledge did not exist before this time - it developed in the most ancient cultures. Scientific culture world differs from others, first of all, in independence and objectivity. It is devoid of value and is universal, since it constructs a certain ideal model of reality, created on the basis of scientific ideas, concepts, and theories. The scientific picture of the world is a set of ideas based on knowledge, and not on faith. If mythology and religion provide an unchanging foundation, a stable basis for ideas, then the scientific picture of the world is changeable. Its constant feature remains rationality and objectivity. For many modern people, faith in the power of science, reason, and objective knowledge determines their ideas about the world. Only what is claimed to be “scientific knowledge” is true, even if it is not.
In addition to those mentioned, there are other pictures of the world: artistic, philosophical. Along with religious and scientific, taken in their “pure form”, regardless of the general cultural understanding, they are important factors in the formation of the image of the world for every person, people, and historical community. But for every era, every culture, there is a certain community of ideas, a predominant focus on one or another image of the world, which creates the whole concept of a “cultural picture of the world.”
In the 20s In the 20th century, the concept of " mentality "It was developed by representatives of historical-psychological and cultural-anthropological directions: L. Lévy-Bruhl, L. Febvre, M. Blok. In the original context, “mentality” meant the presence of representatives of a particular society, interpreted as a national-ethnic or a socio-cultural community of people, a certain “mental toolkit”, a kind of “psychological equipment”, which makes it possible to perceive and understand their natural and social environment in their own way. Currently, two main trends are being discovered in understanding the essence of mentality: on the one hand , mentality includes the way of life, features of folk realities, rituals, style of behavior, moral precepts of the people, self-identification of a person in social world. IN in the narrow sense mentality is what allows you to uniformly perceive the surrounding reality, evaluate it and act in it in accordance with certain established norms and patterns of behavior in society, while adequately perceiving and understanding each other. Mentality is a certain set of symbols formed within the framework of each historical and cultural era and nationality. This set of symbols is fixed in people's minds during dialogue with other people. These symbols (concepts, images, ideas) serve as explanations in everyday life, by expressing knowledge about the world and man’s place in it. Mentality is a mindset, attitude, worldview, spiritual identity of world feeling, world experiences and world relations of a community and an individual representing a particular culture. Mentality contains unconscious, natural of a given people value orientations, archetypes that underlie collective ideas about the world and man’s place in it. The concept of “mentality”, which is close in meaning, can be found among representatives of the psychological concepts of E. Fromm, K.G. Jung, Z. Freud and others. Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist K.G. Jung, trying to comprehend the deep foundations of collective psychology, used the concept of “archetype”.
Archetype represents the mental structures of the collective unconscious, which is not a personal acquisition of a person, but inherited from our distant ancestors. Archetypes are unique forms of understanding the world, in accordance with which people’s thoughts and feelings are formed and determine all mental processes associated with their behavior. cultural unconscious mental
The French ethnographer and psychologist L. Lévy-Bruhl thus designates a number of symbolic forms that exist in primitive thinking. Greatest development the concept of “archetype” was received in analytical psychology by K.G. Jung, who, exploring, under the influence of S. Freud, the “individual unconscious,” gradually came to the conclusion that there is a deeper layer in the human psyche - the “collective unconscious,” which is a reflection of the experience of previous generations, “imprinted” in the structures of the brain.
Unlike the mentality , limited by spatiotemporal and sociocultural frameworks, the archetype is universal regardless of time and place. If mentality depends on the sociocultural context, with its inherent axiological ideas, then the archetype is axiologically neutral. It represents the basis of cultural and historical processes, a certain form which gives the mentality. Thus, the archetype is a deeply abstract category, and the mentality is historical. It is the archetype of the collective unconscious that forms, according to Jung, a certain image world, which is then reflected in mentalities various types society
Thus, cultural archetypes are the basic elements of culture that form constant models of spiritual life. The content of cultural archetypes is typical in culture, and in this regard, archetypes are objective and transpersonal. The formation of cultural archetypes occurs at the level of the culture of all humanity and the culture of large historical communities in the process of systematization and schematization of cultural experience. Because of this, involvement in cultural archetypes the individual is not clearly aware and the reproduction of the archetype by a specific person is a rationally unintentional act.
Norms and values of the worldview.
The most important components Pictures of the world are cultural norms and values. Cultural norms are certain patterns, rules of behavior, action, and knowledge. Norms are regulators that are generally recognized and approved by society. These are “must” instructions, “don’ts” prohibitions, “do” permissions and recommendations. These are sociocultural mechanisms for controlling human behavior. They develop in the everyday life of society and are passed on from generation to generation. In a revised form, cultural norms are embodied in ideology, ethical teachings, and religious concepts.
Growing up in a certain cultural environment, each person learns the regulators adopted in it. He implements in his actions the behavioral programs prescribed to him by culture, often without even realizing it. Thus, moral norms arise in the very practice of mass mutual communication between people. A huge role in the formation of cultural norms characteristic of a given society is played by the approval and condemnation expressed by others, the power of personal and collective example, visual patterns of behavior (as described in verbal form, and in the form of real norms of behavior). The normativity of culture is maintained in the course of interpersonal, mass relationships between people and as a result of the functioning of various social institutions. Norms are expressed explicitly or implicitly in various cultural “texts”: in language (norms and rules of speech); in the forms of morality, law, political life; in customs, rituals, ceremonies, the implementation of which is required by tradition. Standards of behavior are reflected in the concepts of morality and ethics. They show how people should behave in different situations.
Moral V in a broad sense - special shape social consciousness and the type of social relations, in the narrow sense - a set of principles and norms of behavior of people in relation to each other and society. Morality is a value structure of consciousness, a way of regulating human actions in all spheres of life, including work, life and attitude towards the environment.
Morality - one of the main ways of normative regulation of human actions. Morality covers moral views and feelings, life orientations and principles, goals and motives of actions and relationships, rules of human behavior, interpretations of various cultural phenomena, drawing the line between good and evil, conscientiousness and dishonesty, honor and dishonor, justice and injustice, normality and abnormality. , mercy and cruelty, etc.
The cultural picture of the world also includes values. Values arise as a result of a person’s understanding of the significance for him of certain objects - material or spiritual. An object has value if a person sees in it a means of satisfying some of his needs. Value is not an object, but special kind the meaning that a person sees in it. Of decisive importance in this case are the culturally established ideas about objects and how and by what means people should satisfy their desires and needs. Value must be distinguished from usefulness and from truth. Thus, a valuable thing can be completely useless, and a useful thing can have no value. The closer it gets to the ideal, the higher the value.
Each sphere cultural activities human life acquires a value dimension: there are values of material life, economics, social order, politics, morality, art, science, religion. Each type of culture has its own hierarchy of values. Thus, in antiquity, of all value dimensions, the aesthetic approach to the world took first place, in the Middle Ages - the religious and moral one, in modern times - the scientific and value approach. The process of cultural development is always accompanied by a revaluation of values.
Values are divided into final, instrumental and derivative.
1. Final - the highest values and ideals, more important and significant than which there is nothing. These are values that are valuable in themselves (human life, freedom, justice, beauty, happiness, love).
2. Instrumental - the means and conditions necessary, ultimately, to achieve and preserve final values. They are valuable because they are useful for achieving some goal.
3. Derivatives - consequences or expressions of other values that have significance only as signs and symbols of the latter (medal, diploma, gift from a loved one as a sign of his love).
Each person develops a hierarchy of value orientations, but different people not the same. The whole variety of values can be conditionally ordered and classified according to spheres of human life:
· vital values: life, health, safety, quality of life, level of consumption, environmental safety;
social values: social status, hard work, family, prosperity, gender equality, personal independence, ability to achieve, tolerance;
· political values: patriotism, civic engagement, civil liberties;
· moral values: goodness, goodness, love, friendship, duty, honor, honesty, fidelity;
· religious values: God, faith, salvation, grace, Holy Scripture;
· aesthetic values: beauty, harmony, style, etc.
Methodology for studying pictures of the world.
The difficulty in identifying the formation of a picture of the world is that this process does not directly correlate with the simple accumulation of knowledge and increasing the amount of knowledge does not lead to the formation of a corresponding picture of the world. The formation and integrity of a particular picture of the world can be revealed through worldview and its categorical structure. Structures of worldview are dynamic. Categories of worldview and the dominant way of perceiving reality, closely related to it, are subject to changes in the process of individual development. Therefore, research methods should reflect as much as possible the totality of values, attitudes, knowledge and other psychological phenomena presented in the prevailing way of perceiving the world, on the one hand, as well as universal and age-specific archetypes of the unconscious, on the other.
These requirements, in our opinion, are met by the method of studying the components of worldview by identifying semantic units (categories) of information developed by S.V. Tarasov and directly aimed at obtaining information about the socio-psychological components of consciousness that form the picture of the world. S.V. Tarasov, summarizing the results of domestic and foreign studies of age and sociocultural characteristics of worldview conducted by M. Mead, J. Piaget, L.S. Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin, I.S. Conom, B.C. Shubinsky et al., defines worldview “as the integrity of relatively stable patterns, ways of behaving, feeling, thinking, seeing the world around us, inherent in an individual or ethnocultural and sociocultural groups.” The methodology developed by S.V. Tarasov, lies in the study of the process of a person’s use of categories when describing (evaluating) himself and the world around him.
In human language there are words-symbols that can be a kind of “keys” to various structures of consciousness. Words-symbols can interact with codes of consciousness that contain universal (universal), sociocultural and personal content.
As a result of the interaction of words-symbols with the structures of human consciousness, a text is born (written or oral), in which the researcher can identify semantic units (categories of worldview).
Categories can reflect the language of science (philosophy, psychology, physics, etc.) and the language of ordinary ideas about the world. In the interests of studying the categorical structure of consciousness specifically among schoolchildren, who only with age master scientific categories, S.V. Tarasov chose as stimulus material words denoting the elements of nature, the fundamental principles of the world, both in mythological ideas and in some philosophical teachings: sky, earth, fire, air, water, stars. Such word-symbols contain content associated with individual biographical and cultural-historical experience.
The conceptual structure of the methodology is formed by six classes of features: the motivating feature of the word; figurative features (revealed through the combinability properties of the word); conceptual features; objectified in the form of semantic components of the word, synonyms; value characteristics (actualized both in the form of connotations and in combination with a word); functional features (displaying the functional significance of the referent); symbolic features - expressing complex mythological, religious or other cultural concepts attached to the word. The author is of the opinion that a concept is part of a concept; conceptual features are included in its structure. It is possible to recreate the structure of the concept by turning to the fund of oral folk art. The processes of conceptualization and categorization help us to isolate a certain object - really or virtually existing - from the general background of similar objects, to endow it with characteristics common to others and inherent only to it alone. As an example, a description of the stars is given. A whole system of interdependent “primary” ideas about the sky and stars and their expression in ritual, text, word, sign, image, symbol is identified. As the author notes, we find echoes of past beliefs and myths in incomprehensible modern speaker language features of the analyzed concept. These echoes of ancient world views point to existing mythological ideas and a non-scientific picture of the world.
Cultural method.
Culturology, most authors call it an integrative field of knowledge, incorporating the results of research in a number of disciplinary areas (social and cultural anthropology, ethnography, sociology, psychology, linguistics, history, etc.). Of course, not only research results are used, but also methods. In progress cultural analysis specific methods of different disciplines, as a rule, are used selectively, taking into account their ability to resolve analytical problems of a cultural nature. Often they are used not as formal operations and procedures, but as approaches in social or humanistic research. This gives grounds to talk about a certain transformation of disciplinary methods into something more than just a method, and about their special integration within the framework of cultural studies. The following can be cited as examples of such a transformation: the historical approach in cultural studies, which was based on the historical method; in the second half of the 19th century, the structural-functional method became the basis of the approach of the same name in the study of social and cultural reality. And it must be said that a number of approaches retain the original methodological basis and are used by other cultural trends as a general scientific methodology. For example, the historical method is used not only within this approach, but also in any other, be it philosophical-analytical, sociological, axiological, semiotic, etc. It should also be noted that not every cultural approach is also a method. Often, for example, a mistake is made in the literature when the phrase “axiological method” is used in relation to the axiological approach. What is the difference between an approach and a method?
The cultural approach is a broader concept than a method. A method is only a certain set of actions, operations, procedures carried out by a researcher. Method is a means of knowledge. This is the answer to the question: how to know? And the cultural approach rather answers first the question: what should be known? - That is, this or that cultural approach distinguishes in such complex object research, which is culture, a specific subject area on which attention is focused. Although, of course, the approach, its very name, as a rule, contains the nature of the methods that it primarily uses to study a given subject area.
Conclusion
As a result of the study, it was revealed that the cultural picture of the world is the most important foundation in assessing life and understanding the world, and retains its uniqueness in the processes of universalization of culture. The differences between the archetype and mentality, their role and significance in the cultural picture of the world were identified. It turned out that without cultural norms, the existence and further development of human society is impossible, since with their help the actions of individuals and human groups are coordinated, determined the best ways conflict resolution, answers to many life questions are given. This study suggests that people should respect different national views of the world, honor memory and laws social groups to preserve the historical meaning of the picture of the world.
Bibliography
1. Bruner J. Psychology of cognition. M., 1977
2. Grushevitskaya T.G., Popkov V.D., Sadokhin A.P. Basics between cultural communication: Textbook for universities, ed. A.P. Sadokhina. - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2002.
3. V.S. Danilova, N.N. Kozhevnikov. Pictures of the world and methods of their research
4. Davidovich V.E., Zhdanov Yu.A. The essence of culture. - Rostov-on-Don, 1979.
5. M.A. Dedyulina, E.V. Papchenko, E.A. Pomigueva, Tutorial, Taganrog, 2009
6. S.A. Ivanov, textbook, Veliky Novgorod, 2002
7. Ilyenkov E.V. Philosophy and culture (Thinkers of the 20th century). - M., 1991.
8. Sadokhin A.P. Intercultural communication: Textbook. - M.: Alfa-M, INFRA, 2004.
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CULTURAL PICTURE OF THE WORLD - a concrete historical system of worldviews and worldviews, including a set of both rational-conceptual and sensory-figurative ways of perceiving and comprehending the world.
K. k. m. is a holistic image of the world, which is formed within the framework of the initial worldviews (mythological, religious, philosophical, artistic, scientific, etc.).
K. k. m. is formalized in the process of practical activities of people, on the basis of their own experience and traditions inherited from previous generations.
A certain stage of development of production, social relations, and the “isolation” of a person from the natural environment correspond to their own forms of experiencing the world, which are recorded by the corresponding K.K.M.
Its most important components are space, time, cause, fate, the relationship of part and whole, sensory and transcendental, etc.
Taken together, these concepts form a kind of “coordinate grid”, through which the carriers of a certain culture perceive and understand the world, draw its image.
K. K. m. is realized in various semiotic incarnations, coordinated with each other into a single universal sign-symbolic system.
CULTURAL MODERNIZATION-
1) the process of cultural development that meets modern requirements;
2) a concept according to which ways and means of improving “late” cultures and their entry into the world community are recorded.
The idea of cultural theory is based on the idea of the fundamental division of cultures into traditional(agricultural) and modern (industrial).
The first are stable, little changeable, oriented toward repetition and tradition; the latter are dynamic, characterized by high sociocultural mobility, a “race for novelty” in all spheres of life.
There are two types of K. m.: organic and inorganic.
Organic medicine is carried out in a “natural” way, in the course of the historical evolution of a country (for example, England).
Here, the process of cultural change begins with culture, with changes in the system of values, lifestyle, and ideals, and then “advances” occur in the economic sphere.
Inorganic cultural m. represents the imposition (by one’s own government or the metropolis) of ideas, lifestyles, and values that are alien to a given culture.
The result is destruction traditional systems values, ethical standards, social institutions. The modernization process turns into cultural colonization.
CULTURAL SELF-IDENTITY - awareness of the characteristics of one’s culture, its assessment in history and in comparison with other cultures, understanding of its distinctiveness and integrity in the conditions of globalization and the spread of mass unifying culture in the post-traditional world.
K. s. - this is the desire to preserve and protect cultural heritage, formalized in the form of history, myths, religion, and the spiritual life of the people. K. s. not just a “protective shell”, but a constantly revised and evaluated project for the life of an individual or a people, aimed at the future. You can compare K. with. with an autobiography.
Social cultural institutions.
The purpose of social institutions is that they organize and coordinate the activities of people in every sphere, without which this activity would become disjointed, inconsistent and unstable.
The Institute always includes a number of components:
1. a system of functions, fixed by regulations (norms, charters);
2. material resources (buildings, finances, equipment) supporting activities of this institute;
3. Personnel recruited in accordance with the principles and objectives of the institution.
Social cultural institutions are usually classified according to functional criteria, according to which they distinguish:
1) social institutions engaged in spiritual production (publishing houses, film studios, clubs, amateur creative associations);
2) institutions that disseminate cultural values (cinemas, lecture halls, concert associations, schools, universities, libraries, museums);
3) institutions that plan and manage cultural processes (government cultural organizations, creative unions, research institutions).
Typology of cultures: ethnic and national, elite and mass cultures. Approaches to culture and its history.
Important for constructing a cultural typology is the definition of concepts "ethnic" And "national" culture. These concepts are often used as synonyms. However, in cultural studies they have different contents.
Ethnic(folk) culture is the culture of people connected by a common origin (blood relationship) and jointly carried out economic activities.
IN ethnic culture the power of tradition, habit, and customs, passed on from generation to generation at the family or neighborhood level, dominates.
The defining mechanism of cultural communication here is direct communication between generations of people living nearby.
Elements of folk culture - rituals, customs, myths, beliefs, legends, folklore - are preserved and transmitted within the boundaries of a given culture through the natural abilities of each person - his memory, oral speech and living language, natural musical ear, organic plasticity.
National culture As a rule, it is devoid of a cult character and is a product of predominantly individual creativity. National culture is created not by the ethnic group as a whole, but by the educated part of society - writers, artists, philosophers, scientists.
The internal organization and structure of national culture is much more complex than that of ethnic culture.
National culture includes, along with traditional everyday life and professional culture, along with ordinary ones, it also has specialized areas of culture (literature, philosophy, science, law, etc.).
Elite culture- it is a creative avant-garde, an art laboratory where new types and forms of art are constantly being created. She is also called high culture, because it is created by the elite of society, or at its request by professional creators. It includes fine art, classical music and literature. As a rule, elite culture is ahead of the level of perception of it by a moderately educated person and the general public. Creators of elite culture, as a rule, do not count on a wide audience. To understand these works you need to master the special language of art.
Mass culture- This is a public culture that does not express the refined tastes of aristocrats or the spiritual quest of the people. Its greatest scope begins in the middle of the 20th century, when the means mass media penetrated most countries. This is an art for everyone and it must take into account the tastes and demands of consumers who pay with their money for its commercial benefits. As a rule, popular culture has less artistic value, rather than elitist and popular. It's changing quickly. susceptible to fashion and reacts to any new event.
Approaches to culture and its history.
Material culture.
It has an eternal substance. This is the culture that is defended in the objective world (clock, table, chair).
It includes only what is created by man and what can be touched.
It creates the standard of living of society, the nature of its material needs and the possibility of satisfying them.
However, it is not the object itself that belongs to this culture, but the image associated with it.
If you make an unstable table, then the image of the table will be destroyed.
2. Spiritual culture.
It includes various ideas and songs (in terms of ideological content), legends, and myths.
Everything related to the image relates to her.
Spiritual culture determines the connections between people.
Spiritual culture contains morality, aesthetics and positive knowledge.
3. Physical culture.
Thanks to physical education, a social person develops his motor abilities.
It prepares a person for any type of activity and therefore is the source and basis of pedagogy. This includes the culture of the body, which adapts to the implementation of 1st and 2nd forms of culture.
Humanity has common roots. But in the process of development it “branches” into many diverse, special cultures. Each of them, growing up in specific conditions (geographical, historical, technological, everyday life, etc.), unfolds its own history, develops its own language, and forms its own worldview.
All the richness of the existence of a given culture, the integrity of the existence of a given people forms a certain way of understanding the world and existing in it. The result of this specific vision of the environment is cultural picture of the world- a system of images, ideas, knowledge about the structure of the world and man’s place in it. Human existence is diverse and multi-layered. Some of these layers (namely those associated with primary sensations, the initial attempts of nascent humanity to establish themselves in this world) are not subject to rational control and are unconscious. Therefore, the concept of “cultural picture of the world” is used in the broad and narrow sense of the word.
In a strict, narrow sense, it includes primary intuitions, national archetypes, figurative structure, ways of perceiving time and space, “self-evident” but unproven statements, extra-scientific knowledge. In a broad sense, along with the listed elements, it also includes scientific knowledge.
The key moments of the picture of the world are fixed in language. So, if for a German space is thought of as “apartment”, “elimination” (the German term for space is "Kant" - associated with the meaning “empty”), then for the French “space” is associated
with extension, stretching, coming from within. For R. Descartes, space is “stretching”, “spreading”. The space turns out to be filled without a trace. I. Newton clears it again, creating a model of absolute space, which is “hollow”. It was easily geometrized. Space for I. Newton is an infinite container of bodies: it can be filled with matter, or be completely free of it. In both cases, the properties of space are the same everywhere. Emptiness is unchanged, it is empty everywhere. “Emptiness” is the absence of any form, but in relation to it, every form becomes apparent. Thus, emptiness is not something empty and meaningless, it is the possibility of all and all forms. And as a possibility it is real. The special perception of time in different cultures is also reflected in language. Thus, the etymology of the concept “time” is tempus- goes back to lat. tendo- stretch, spread. Hence the terms of Descartes: extension- extension, entendement - understanding. In the German consciousness, time is thought of as a chopped segment, and what stretches and lasts is eternity. These primary sensations of time and space, fixed in language, then result in hypotheses, and later in strictly scientific theories of the structure of the Universe. Such connections can be traced between the understanding of number and the type of mathematics, between the primary sensations of the world, enshrined in primordial symbols, and the figurative structure of the entire culture (as, for example, O. Spengler did).
The cultural picture of the world is built from the point of view of what it (the world) means for the person living in it. But these meanings cannot always become the property of consciousness and will. Culture is the formation of a certain meaningful community between people, connecting and uniting them and open to other existence and experience, in the light of which things function as elements of human rationality, since they bear the imprint of human attitude towards them. In the process of embodiment of an individual’s plans in an object, an involuntary realization of the subject himself, his abilities, experience, etc. occurs. During various tests objective world this or that thing, phenomenon finds its place in the world order public life.
With an instrumental approach, the concept of “cultural picture of the world” is reduced only to rational evidence, to a description of knowledge expressed in language (including scientific knowledge) about the world and its various layers. With this approach, the originality and uniqueness of a person is neglected, his existence loses its personal character.
However, its existence cannot be reduced only to the ability to rationally strive for certain goals, since the existential layer of human activity lies not only in the aim to produce the finite, but also to understand the totality, to strive towards the horizon of the universality of human existence.
The cultural picture of the world is constructed as what E. Husserl called the “life world,” which is the concrete historical basis of mutually agreed upon experience. That objective content of the world, which is revealed to a person in the process of his objective-practical activity, is given to him in unity with meaning and significance. Meanings act as guidelines and means of human action; they constitute the expedient structure of the world.
Initially, the cultural picture of the world takes shape in the context of those forms of life that are not recognized as rational conditions for human actions in the world. The elements of this picture of the world are those intuitive ideas about reality and those meanings that provide guidelines for human consciousness, will, and thinking. The cultural picture of the world presents a transformed and folded into the matter of language perfect shape the existence of the objective world, its properties, connections and relationships revealed by cumulative social practice.
Thus, the cultural picture of the world consists of thematically clear, meaningful and obvious contents of artifacts and of non-thematic meanings and personal meanings, experiences, feelings, motives, and assessments. Therefore, from a content-thematic point of view, we can distinguish scientific, aesthetic, religious, ethical, legal and other similar pictures of the world. From this position, the picture of the world is reduced to a set of information and data. But the construction of these pictures is preceded by the construction of a picture of intuitive ideas, meanings and meanings as an expression of the characteristics of the life of a given culture. Moreover, each meaning always represents in a special way the universality of the world in which people live.
The development of connections between cultures leads to the “blurring” of the unique features of each of them. So, in the 20th century. peoples and countries begin to unify in everyday life and in thinking. This is especially clearly evidenced by the processes of computerization, which subordinate the logic of thinking of those who work with the computer to a single algorithm. And yet, at the core of every culture, what is preserved is what is “crystallized” under the influence of the country’s nature, its climate, landscapes, food, ethnic type, language, memory of its history and culture. Thus, the cultural picture of the world retains its uniqueness in the processes of universalization of culture.
cultural picture of the world is the world presented in a semantic meaning for a certain social community and the individual. COMPONENT OF THE CULTURAL KATRINA OF THE WORLD 1) Ontological categories - which express the idea of the most general attributes of the surrounding objective world (space, time, movement. Cause, effect, change, property, quantity, quality, randomness. pattern.) 2) Social categories - characterizing a person in society, the most important circumstances of people’s lives, their relationships, the spiritual world (labor, property, power, church, money, justice, equality, kindness, conscience, duty) 3) A system of value relations and value orientations. In every cultural picture of the world. Personalities. A people or a historical era develops its own hierarchy of values and value dimensions (family, love, friendship, money). In the Middle Ages, values were morality and religiosity. In modern times - values - rationality, science. Modern times have seen a rigidly pragmatic approach to everything. KKM in developed cultures(especially in the modern era) is multi-layered and polyvariant. It includes a wide variety of knowledge and ideas. scientific, philosophical, scientific, everyday, psychological. In accordance with the dominance of one or another of the listed components, the following types and types are distinguished. There are different pictures of the world: 1) scientific theory (for example, when a person is sick, he goes to the doctor.) 2) philosophical theory. 3) Artistic K.m. 4) religious km. (Belief in the supernatural) 4) Everyday km. 5) Mythological k.m. (presence of ritual)
10. The concept of cultural dynamics and types of cultural changes.
1. Culture is the process of constant adaptation of a person to the changing conditions of his existence by transforming these conditions in the process of human activity.
One of the branches of cultural studies that studies the origin of cultures is cultural genesis. This concept is used to analyze the processes of sustainability and cultural development. Culturogenesis is a type of social and historical dynamics of culture, which consists in the creation of new cultural forms and their integration into existing cultural systems. (In a narrow sense, cultural genesis is understood as the process of formation and origin of culture.)
Culturogenesis consists in the process of constant self-renewal of culture, both through the renewal and complementarity of already existing forms of culture, and through the creation of new directions and phenomena that correspond to the cultural dynamics of time. Culturogenesis, as the process of generating new forms of culture, occurs constantly, and not only at the stage of the emergence of culture. Three phases can be distinguished in the genesis of cultural forms:
a) initiation, development of innovations,
b) creation on their basis of new cultural forms,
c) their introduction into social practice, their replacement of old cultural forms or the coexistence of old and new.
Types of Cultural Change
Cultural variability is understood as the property of self-renewal of culture, including the development, degradation or desemantization (loss of meaning) of its individual features or entire complexes. The reasons for cultural variability are:
Adaptation to the changed external conditions of life of communities;
The need to resolve accumulated internal contradictions;
Creative initiative of individuals.
Variability can be progressive, or it can be degrading. The latter is associated with a decrease in the functional efficiency of certain objects and structures. Desemantization of an object is the loss of its original meaning, a change in this meaning, or a reinterpretation of the given content of the object in the public consciousness. The predominance of statics over cultural dynamics inevitably leads to cultural stagnation. True, the destructive crises were not in vain - the culture regressed and became simplified.
Cultural stagnation is a state of long-term unchanged culture, in which innovations are sharply limited or prohibited. Norms, values, methods of activity, ideals are reproduced practically unchanged. Society is “conserved”, protected from external influences by the “Chinese wall” of isolationism, and from internal changes - with the help of strict control by various social institutions - the state, church, education system, etc. A culture can be in a state of stagnation for both a short historical period and a long time. Of course, there are some cultural changes taking place here, but they do not go beyond the existing cultural traditions.
Tendencies towards self-isolation and conservation of traditions and cultural norms manifest themselves primarily in small, local ethnic or religious-sectarian groups. Still in tropical Africa or in the South American jungle they find tribes that have no contact with the “big world” and have stopped in their social and cultural development at the level of the Stone Age. But highly developed civilizations can also find themselves in a state of stagnation - let’s remember Ancient Egypt during the era of the Pharaohs or the cultures of the Mayans and Aztecs. Cultural stagnation is dangerous for the degradation of society. The emergence of anomie (a state of decomposition of the value system, apathy and disappointment) in conditions of a sociocultural crisis leads to the barbarization of society. The French historian E. Ladurie argued that the chaotization of public life leads to extreme instability of the mood of the masses, who are prone to irrational outbursts of indignation and cruelty. During this period, the place of destroyed norms and mental attitudes is taken by a primitive layer of consciousness. Sociocultural degradation is expressed in the substitution of class thinking or the thinking of stable social groups with their certain value guidelines, the primitivized consciousness of non-classical or non-group types of human communities. In these conditions, as a rule, the lower, lumpen strata of society, united in a crowd, are active. The “crowd effect” was also studied by Le Bon, Tarde and Siegele, who showed the primitive and even pathological level of the psyche of any crowd and mass. G. Tarde believed that a crowd is a negative and active cohesive set of individuals. In it, the individual’s critical attitude to reality and to current events is reduced. The crowd is charged primarily with destructive energy against someone; primitive reactions of imitation and mental infection predominate in it. This imitation reaction, as shown by B.F. Porshnev, is primarily characteristic of herd animals and represents an atavism in humans.
Not all cultural changes lead to a way out of cultural stagnation. Cultural dynamics is always a holistic, orderly process that has a directional character. It should not be confused with the concept of “cultural change,” which implies any transformation in culture. If we take the history of the development of society, then cultural dynamics can be realized in the following main types: progressive-linear and cyclical. Cyclic changes differ, for example, from evolutionary ones in that they are repeatable. If we study the cultural dynamics within society, we can talk about the emergence of cultural phenomena, their spread, and functioning.
^ 2. The word “dynamics” (from the gr. dinamie) is translated as force. In physics, this is a branch of mechanics where the movement of bodies under the influence of forces applied to them is studied. In cultural studies, cultural dynamics refers to changes that occur in culture under the influence of external and internal forces. The term "change" has many meanings. It implies any transformation that has occurred in a particular cultural system. Therefore, to assess the nature of the changes taking place, the term “development” is used. Cultural development is a change in the material and spiritual components of culture, as a result of which a change in composition or structure occurs, the emergence, transformation or disappearance of any cultural elements and connections, a transition to a new qualitative state. Cultural development is characterized by the simultaneous presence of three main properties of dynamics: irreversibility, directionality, regularity. Since reversibility characterizes cyclic processes, the reproduction of a constant system of functions, the lack of regularity is characteristic of random processes of a catastrophic type; in the absence of direction, changes cannot accumulate, and therefore the process of change is deprived of a single internally connected line characteristic of development.
Development includes both an ascending line - progress, and a descending line - regression. Progress (from Latin progressus - movement forward, success) is a type of directed development, characterized by a transition from lower to higher, from simple to complex, from less perfect to more perfect. In cultural studies, there are two main approaches to the problem of cultural progress.
The first approach is based on the evidence of changing stages in the development of culture, as an enrichment of its system of values, the development of all forms of human life. Within the framework of this approach, many forms and types of culture, with all their diversity, form a single line of spiritual and material production development of humanity and consider the progress of culture as an expression of the integrity of its nature and the unity of cultural diversity.
Another approach questions the existence of cultural progress as the progressive development of a single culture, based on the understanding of its various types as local, autonomous, having their own life cycle (O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, P. Sorokin), as different variants of cultural systems, not reducible to each other. This, naturally, narrows the possibilities for comparing them, which significantly limits the understanding of progress within the framework of “one’s own culture”, the cyclical nature of its development, and mainly in the spiritual sphere.
It should also be noted that culture is a contradictory unity of preservation, reproduction and renewal, the development of its elements, properties and relationships. The state of peace and immutability of culture is expressed by the concept of “statics”; and those changes that occur in culture and in the interaction of different cultures are expressed by the concept of “dynamics”.
Therefore, culture contains both stable and changeable aspects. Stability, “inertia” in culture is, first of all, tradition.
Traditions are elements of cultural heritage (ideas, values, customs, rituals, ways of perceiving the world, etc.), which are preserved and passed on from generation to generation unchanged. Traditions exist in all forms of culture. We can talk about scientific, religious, moral, national, labor and other traditions. The system of traditions reflects the integrity, stability, and statics of the social organism. You cannot interfere in it roughly, “clumsily,” as this violates important mechanisms of culture. In particular, one should not “improve” spiritual life by completely destroying old spiritual values and historical memory. In this situation, the “innovator” will find himself in the role of Genghis Khan, who captured the agricultural region of Kang Su. His military leaders said they did not know what to do with the cultivated lands. The best thing to do, in their opinion, with the “fruits of victory” is to destroy the rural population, then the fields, left to their own devices, would again become a steppe, returning to the noble state of pasture. (Today such historical oblivion is demonstrated in relation to Soviet culture.)
Culture cannot exist without updating. Creativity and change are the other side of the development of society. Novation (from Latin novatio - renewal, change) is a way of renewing culture. The unity of tradition and renewal is a universal characteristic of any culture. Man is the subject of creative activity in culture. However, not every innovation becomes a fact of culture. Novelty for the sake of novelty does not contain real creative content and turns into meaningless antics. The creation of cultural values is always of a universally significant nature. Scientific discovery or piece of art must spread throughout society, receive feedback in the minds and hearts of people. Of course, we are not talking about momentary recognition. At one time, I. Severyanin, and not his contemporaries A. Blok or S. Yesenin, was proclaimed the “king of poets”. However, history has put everything in its place. Any innovation in culture that has deep content and value is tested by time and re-evaluated by each subsequent generation of people.
The different ratio of traditions and renewal, creativity in culture provides the basis for classifying societies into traditional and modern. In traditional societies, tradition dominates creativity. Cultural patterns are reproduced in their “primordial” form. Changes are made within the tradition in an unsystematic and random manner. Deviations from the norm are usually disapproved or denied. For example, in medieval society, the artist’s main task was to reflect what had already happened - sacred history, the history of Christ’s coming to earth, his torment and death to atone for the sins of the human race - what was recorded in the Bible. Thus, the model for the famous icon painting “Savior Not Made by Hands” (the image of the face of Christ) was the imprint of the Savior’s face on a towel described in the legend. What is important for the artist here is not self-expression of his creative self, but adherence to the traditional image - the canon. This explains the indifference of medieval masters to the problem of individual authorship, when entire pieces literary text(musical plays, operas, etc.) moved from work to work without any indication of the source of citation.
In modern society, the basic value is renewal and innovation. The principle of “prohibition of plagiarism” applies here. Every innovation - scientific, artistic, technological - has an individual author. Repetition and copying are valued very low by society. A true artist or scientist is always the creator of something new. Modern society is permeated by the race for novelty. This has a significant effect. Over the 300 years of its existence in countries affected by the scientific and technological revolution, experimental science has made it possible to increase the standard of living by 15-20 times. However, this race leads to the fact that social and cultural subsystems are subject to constant pressure, which gives rise to crisis phenomena. Therefore, stabilization and sustainable development are extremely relevant for modern society.
Stability is understood as the natural, normal development of society as opposed to instability, often identified with crisis. However, these concepts must be separated and distinguished from each other, since each of them has its own, specific content. One of the main features of stable and sustainable development of society is the absence of violence unauthorized by the state and the ability of the state and its bodies to quickly and effectively respond to social problems and suppress emerging pockets of illegitimate violence. In this way, society preserves itself.
There is a classification of forms of stability based on the methods of achieving it. Minimal and democratic stability are distinguished. Minimum stability can be achieved through total, coercive, violent methods of control, with the help of which the possibility of national and civil wars and armed conflicts is suppressed from above. Democratic stability is formed in a democratic society, in which the threat to stability is eliminated through the rapid response of democratic structures to the threat of illegitimate forms of violence. The constitutional order is one of the determining factors of stability. According to S. Huntington, stability is defined as “order plus continuity.” The legitimacy of the existing system largely depends on the level of political culture of the population, on the support of voters for a given system of power and the values it represents. At the same time, the activity and involvement of the population in political process, the importance of public opinion are necessary conditions for stability within a democracy. Sociocultural institutions function in a stable manner if they are based on the same values and attitudes that dominate the family, the education system, and everyday life. In addition, the most important feature of a stable society is certain behavior patterns that have the status of psychological habits and social standards.
The concept of instability is associated with non-compliance with the conditions and violation of the parameters discussed above. An unstable society cannot cope with the changes and innovations that inevitably arise in the development of its culture. In particular, in modern Russia the main reason for instability (according to A. Flier) is the lack of conditions and cultural skills for the equal participation of all citizens in free social competition in the labor and capital markets, which leads to the depreciation of cultural norms and values that ensure the sustainable development of the country .
Thus, the question of cultural progress is a question of the continuity of the elements and values of culture in the progressive historical development of society, in the relationship of various historical eras and periods of human development, individual countries, peoples and communities.
The identification of the unity and integrity of culture, which is a way of organizing human activity in the process of its progressive transformation, the continuity of its enduring values at various stages of the development of society, can be carried out through understanding the essential generic characteristics associated with the practical-transformative attitude of man to the world around him, the boundlessness of his cognitive and practical possibilities, his ability to act according to the logic of all things and objects.
Therefore, the most important essential generic characteristic of a person is his potential universality, infinity and universality. Of course, in each specific historical period, a person is limited by the entire totality of natural and social conditions. However, the place and role of man in knowledge and practice are determined by his essential generic universality and generality.
The purpose of culture is comprehensive development person; The meaning of culture is to serve man and humanity as a whole.
Cultural picture of the world
Humanity is united by its roots. But in the process of development, it “branches” into many diverse, special local and national cultures. Each of them, growing up in specific living conditions (geographical, historical, technological, everyday, etc.), unfolds its own history, develops its own language, and forms its own worldview. The invariant of human existence is realized in each culture in a special projection - according to the unique diversity in which it lives.
All the richness of the existence of a given culture, the entire integrity of the existence of a given people forms a certain way of understanding both the world and being in it. The result of this specific vision of the world in which man lives is the cultural picture of the world - a system of images, ideas, knowledge about the structure of the world and man’s place in this world. Human existence is diverse and multi-layered. Some of these layers (namely those associated with primary sensations, the first attempts of nascent humanity to establish themselves in this world) are not subject to rational control, reflexive apprehension and operational use. Therefore, the concept of “cultural picture of the world” is used in the broad and narrow sense of the word. In a strict, narrow sense, the cultural picture of the world includes primary intuitions, national archetypes, figurative structures, ways of perceiving time and space, “self-evident” but unproven statements, and extra-scientific knowledge. In a broad sense, along with the listed elements, scientific knowledge is also included in the cultural picture of the world (G.V. Drach).
Human life activity proceeds in constant division into the layer where they are directly carried out. life cycles(that is, where the activity of individuals proceeds as a natural process), and to the layer where reflection is included, a consciously purposeful way of human self-affirmation in the world. These features of life activity receive their form of expression in the form of meaningful crystallizations, what can be called life meanings, which are difficult to define strictly formally, but this does not make the meanings lose their fundamentality for human existence.
Ultimately, the semantic connections of life activity form those fundamental rhythms and cycles of human life, those spatial and temporal dependencies of life activity that constitute the premise cultural process. This can be illustrated in everyday life life examples. So, for example, a person already satisfies the most basic needs and impulses in life (for example, food) in a strictly defined and meaningful way. A person not only satisfies hunger or thirst, but does this in certain cultural forms: he uses certain utensils, certain cooking procedures and rituals of eating. In the human community, meal time is not indifferent to individuals, because it is no longer determined by the feeling of hunger, but by cultural meaning. Thus, a meal for a person of a certain culture acquires a special ritual and symbolic meaning. All life manifestations of a person as a subject of a certain culture are fixed by certain rites, rituals, norms, regulations, which are semantic units of cultural order that regulate the temporal and topological processes of human life.
The key moments of the picture of the world are fixed in language. So, if for a German space is thought of as “apartment”, “elimination” (the German term for space - “Rait” - is associated with the meaning “empty”), then for a Frenchman “space” is associated with extension, stretching coming from within. For R. Descartes, space is “stretching”, “spreading”. The space turns out to be filled without a trace. I. Newton clears it again, creating a model of absolute space, which is “hollow”. Such space was easily subject to geometrization. Space for I. Newton is an infinite container of bodies: it can be filled with matter, or it can be completely free of it. In both cases, the properties of space are the same everywhere. Emptiness is unchanged, it is empty everywhere. “Emptiness” is the absence of any form, but in relation to it, every form becomes apparent. Thus, emptiness is not something empty and meaningless, it is the possibility of all and all forms. And as a possibility it is real. The special perception of time in different cultures is also reflected in language. Thus, the etymology of the concept “time” goes back to Lat. and means “to stretch, to spread.” Hence Descartes' terms: extension - extension, entendement - understanding. In the German consciousness, time is thought of as a chopped segment, and what stretches and lasts is eternity. These primary sensations of time and space, fixed in language, then result in hypotheses, and later - in strictly scientific devices of the Universe. Such connections can be traced between the understanding of number and the type of mathematics, between the primary sensations of the world, enshrined in primordial symbols, and the figurative structure of the entire culture (as, for example, O. Spengler did).
The cultural picture of the world is constructed from the point of view of the significance of the world for the person living in it. But these meanings cannot always become the property of consciousness and will. Culture is not limited to the labor process and the relationships between people that arise during the labor process. Culture is the constitution of a certain meaningful community between people, which, connecting and uniting, is open to other being and experience, in the light of which things function not only instrumentally (that is, as conductors of the activity of subjects), but also as elements of human rationality (since they carry bears the imprint of a certain human attitude towards them). In the process of embodiment of human plans in an object, an involuntary realization of the subject himself, his abilities, experience, etc. occurs. In the course of various tests of the objective world, this or that object, thing, phenomenon finds its place in the world order of social life. Thus, meanings express the expediency of things and objects not only in relation to the goals of human activity, but also in relation to specific place in the human world order.
The meanings in which his world exists for a person thus acquire a special dimension, special way existence, which is different from those goals and objectives that individuals purposefully guide in their practical activities. In addition, when forming the objective world, its functions and meanings, subjects of practice cannot transfer into the field of rational control all the conditions for the realization of their goals.
From this point of view, the cultural picture of the world is constructed as what E. Husserl called the “life world.” Lifeworld is the concrete historical basis of mutually agreed upon experience, the intersubjective identification of any meaning, the universe of anonymously emerging initial evidence, a priori in relation to the logical-theoretical schematizations of nature, culture, and life. That objective content of the world, which is revealed to a person in the process of his objective-practical activity, is given to him in unity with meaning and significance.
Thus, meanings act as guidelines and means of human action; they constitute the purposeful structure of the world, in which structural and functional connections are an invariant of the purposeful and rational unity of the world. It is the world of meaning that provides each individual with an intersubjective set of means and ends; they are significant because they have been practically tested, and therefore are reasonable and understandable within the life world.
With the instrumentalist approach, the concept of “cultural picture of the world” is reduced only to rationalized evidence, to a description of verbally expressed knowledge (including scientific knowledge) about the world and its various layers. But human existence is not monological, but dialogical and polysemantic; it cannot be reduced to some kind of operational unity. With this approach, the uniqueness of the subject is neglected, human existence is depersonalized.
Human existence cannot be reduced only to the ability to rationally strive for certain goals, since the existential layer of human activity lies not only in the aim to produce the finite, but also to understand the totality, to strive towards the horizon of the totality of human existence. According to P. Ricoeur, this aspiration is embodied not so much in the purposive-rational acts of the subject, in his goals and maxims, but in the pre-reflective potentials of human will (“I want”), language and morality (“I must”), which are not fundamentally reducible to rational-target intentions and meanings. P. Ricoeur identifies three ways to comprehend meaning: abstract level progress, an existential level of ambiguity, a mysterious level of hope.
Human existence is multidimensional, multi-valued, it is associated not only with understanding the artifacts of the cultural world, but also with the comprehension and understanding of the person himself and the various conditions in which he finds himself. The turn of 20th century philosophy towards processuality, uniqueness and individuality of human worlds was a springboard for deeper cultural studies.
Similar changes in views on reality have occurred in modern natural science. Comparing the classical and non-classical models of reality, I. Prigogine and N. Stengers note that within the framework of the classical model of reality, the subject “at any moment in time knows everything that needs to be known, namely, the distribution of masses in space and their velocities. Each state contains the whole truth about all other states... In this sense, the description provided by science is tautological, since both the past and the future are contained in the present.” A completely different understanding of reality develops in non-classical natural science, where the most essential thing is the transition to “temporality, to multiplicity.”
Thus, initially the cultural picture of the world takes shape in the context of those forms of life that are not recognized as rational conditions for human actions in the world. The elements of this picture of the world are those intuitive ideas about reality and those meanings that provide guidelines for human consciousness, will, and thinking. The cultural picture of the world represents the ideal form of existence of the objective world, its properties, connections and relationships, transformed and folded into the matter of language, revealed by the total social practice.
Thus, the cultural picture of the world consists of thematically clear, meaningful and obvious contents of artifacts and of non-thematic meanings and personal meanings, experiences, feelings, motives, and assessments. Therefore, from a content-thematic point of view, we can distinguish scientific, aesthetic, religious, ethical, legal, etc. pictures of the world; from this position, the picture of the world is reduced to a set of information and data. But the construction of these pictures is preceded by the construction of another picture - a picture of intuitive ideas, meanings and meanings as an expression of the characteristics of the life of a given culture. Moreover, each meaning always represents in a special way the universality of the world in which people live.
The development of connections between cultures leads to the “blurring” of the unique features of each of them. Thus, in the 20th century, peoples and countries begin to unify in everyday life and thinking. This is especially clearly visible in the processes of computerization, which subordinate the logic of those who work with the computer to a single algorithm. And yet, at the core of every culture, what is preserved is what is “crystallized” under the influence of the country’s nature, its climate, landscapes, food, ethnic type, language, memory of its history and culture. The most important components of the picture of the world, along with intuitive ideas, imagery, archetypes, and ways of perceiving the world, are cultural norms and values.
According to A.A. Veremyev, the mentality of the people gives rise to a corresponding picture of the world. This means that for all peoples the visible and tangible world is the same, but it is perceived differently. Consequently, the cultural picture of the world is directly related to mentality. And if the latter is a way of perceiving and seeing the reality surrounding a person, then the picture of the world is the result of this perception. Their relationship can be represented as a relationship between content (picture of the world) and form (mentality).
The “cultural picture of the world”, or “cultural model of the world”, “cultural image of the world” (in this context, these concepts will be used as identical) differs significantly from both the scientific and philosophical pictures of the world, and from the religious picture of the world. Although the cultural model of the world is close to the artistic picture of the world, nevertheless, it does not coincide with the latter.
The scientific picture of the world is understood as a certain ideal model of reality, created on the basis of scientific ideas and principles and serving as the basis for the construction of scientific theories.
It embodies the latest achievements of science, and its changes are due to the process of development of knowledge. In its content, the scientific picture of the world is objective and devoid (or almost devoid) of a value-based attitude to the world.
The philosophical picture of the world, like the scientific model of the world, is based on scientific knowledge, but, unlike the latter, the philosophical view of the world merges with its assessment. Consequently, the philosophical picture of the world is a synthesis of scientific and value ideas about the world and man.
The religious picture of the world is a model of reality, expressed in the form of fantastic, illusory images.
Each religious system creates its own image of the world. It is based on faith in a certain Absolute - in God or Buddha, transformed into an object of religious emotions and worship.
The relationship between the cultural and artistic pictures of the world is peculiar.
An artistic picture of the world is its image in its semantic meaning for the artist.
The cultural model of the world is the world presented in a semantic meaning for a certain social community.
From the above definitions it becomes obvious that the mythological model of the world will be both an artistic and cultural picture of the world.
All of the above-described pictures of the world are closely interconnected and influence the process of formation of the cultural model of the world, however, there are significant differences between them.
If the scientific picture of the world strives to present reality as it is, to give its most adequate image, devoid of subjective assessments, then the cultural model of the world is unthinkable without such a subjective principle; it has never been and cannot become a “faithful copy” of reality. One more significant feature of these pictures of the world should be pointed out. The scientific picture of the world presupposes a logical explanation, because its provisions are coherent and theoretically justified, and its conclusions are motivated with scientific rigor. The situation is fundamentally different with the explanation of the cultural picture of the world. Although each person has his own picture of the world, he, nevertheless, cannot accurately describe it, since most of it is outside his consciousness, and therefore cannot be analyzed by its bearer.
The system of value relations and orientations of a social community (its understanding of good, evil, happiness, justice, aesthetic perfection), its ideas about time and space, the universe, etc. are the meaningful basis of the picture of the world and give it those features of originality that make it possible to distinguish one culture from another.
Indeed, in different cultures, people perceive, feel and experience the world in their own way and thereby create unique image world, or picture of the world. Therefore, the cultural model of the world can be accepted as a classification basis in historical and cultural typology, which is what, for example, the authors of the collective study propose “ Art culture in pre-capitalist formations" (1984).
Since the cultural model reflects reality in its value aspect, the same phenomenon in the scientific and cultural pictures of the world takes on different meanings. For example, in the scientific picture of the world, light and color are represented as physical phenomena, in the cultural model of the world they are expressed as values.
Both the scientific and cultural pictures of the world often operate with the same concepts, but the semantic meaning of the latter is different in them. For example, such concepts include space and time. In this regard, attention should be paid to the fact of the existence of three types of space and time. It's about about real, conceptual and perceptual space and time.
Real space and time is the physical space and time in which a person lives, objects and things exist, and various processes take place. We deal with conceptual space and time in theory: conceptual models of space and time are operated in the scientific picture of the world. Perceptual space and time is the space and time as it appears to the perceiving subject. If the scientific picture of the world refers to conceptual space and time, then the cultural model of the world and artistic creativity deal with perceptual space and time as it is perceived and experienced by people of a certain era.
If philosophical natural scientific concepts of space and time (like any other concepts) are subjective in form, but objective in content, then cultural space and time are subjective both in form and content. In the cultural picture of the world, space and time never appear in the form of abstract phenomena; here they are always specific, filled with substantive content and have a “local character”. For example, each cultural and historical community of people has its own ideas about space and time, determined by the conditions of its life. Thus, pastoral and agricultural peoples, due to their natural dependence on nature, associate their perception of time with the change of seasons. Therefore, time is represented by them in the form of “circular” time, etc.
Questions for self-control:
- 1. Give an analysis of the following definitions of culture:
- · culture is a set of material and spiritual values created by man;
- · culture is the spiritual life of society;
- · culture is everything created by man, not given by nature;
- · culture is the material activity of people;
- · culture is the aesthetic activity of man, the creation of beauty.
- 2. Culture is often called “the most important memory of humanity.”
What is behind this expression?
What, then, is meant by “internal memory”?
Is this comparison even valid?
- 3. Some culturologists propose to understand by culture the behavior of a person that he learned, and did not inherit genetically. Is it possible to accept such a definition?
- 4. Ortega - and - Gasset wrote “The degree of culture is measured by the degree of development of norms.” Is this statement true?
- 5. Why is it so difficult to give a clearly fixed definition of culture? What is the reason for such a large number of its definitions?
- 6. Explain the expression: “engineering activity is a semiotic (sign) system”?
- 7. What is the structure of culture?
- 8. Name the functions of culture;
- 9. How is culture understood from the point of view of the technological aspect and the activity approach;
- 10. What do you think will be related to the interpretation of definitions of culture in the future?
- 11. Identify the components of cultural, religious, mythological, scientific, artistic painting peace. Establish points of difference and common ground.
