(4.7.2)--AnewTheoryofculturalgeneApossibl.pdf

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1、 A new Theory of cultural gene:A possible expression path in cultural anthropology Compared with biological genes,there is also a basic cultural unit,cultural gene,which can be used to represent human cultural nature and profoundly influence the nature of culture.Human culture can be reconsidered in

2、 the cognition and expression of cultural genes,thus providing a new possible path for cultural anthropology to study culture.Key words:meme;cultural gene;cultural anthropology Wu Qiulin is a professor of ethnology and sociology at Guizhou Minzu University.Address:Guiyang,Zip code 550025.Gregor Joha

3、nn Mendel,an Austrian biogeneticist,first proposed the concept of biogenetic gene,opening the door to the study of biogenetic gene.A new science,biogenetics,has emerged with increasing influence.Modern biogenetics has proved that a gene(genetic factor)is a piece of DNA that has genetic effects and i

4、s the basic genetic unit that controls biological traits.Therefore,biological genes are a basic way to represent the existence of biological nature.If compared with biological genes,is there also a basic cultural unit,cultural gene,which can be used to represent the cultural nature of human beings a

5、nd profoundly influence the nature of culture?Can human culture be reconsidered in the recognition and expression of memes?If possible,it will provide a new expression path for cultural anthropology.I.Research on cultural genes at home and abroad Foreign research on memes is mainly in the form of me

6、mes.The study of Enigma is a kind of research with the nature of communication based on the reproduction and communication cognition of thousands of copies.The term mysticism refers to the Selfish Gene,published in 1976 by British biologist and behavioral ecologist Richard Dawkins.In The book.Dawkin

7、s believes that culture also has similar biological gene replication,Mysticism refers to such cultural replication behavior.The Selfish Gene is a biological reader that popularizes the knowledge of biological genes.In the book,Dawkins USES a metaphor from social ethics that describes biological gene

8、s as selfish in order to interpret the biology of human beings and hope to repair the biological defects of human nature with the help of things like the Enigma.It can be seen that the book has a certain degree of social progress.The appearance of the word Enigma soon triggered a global enigma resea

9、rch upsurge.In 1998,Dawkins student Susan Blackmore published Genetics of the Social Transmission process of The Enigma Machine Culture,hoping to develop a theory of enigma that would explain the evolution of human culture.In her opinion,cultural replication is always a kind of replication based on

10、imitation,which has an important influence on human culture.Man is not only the machine of biological genes,but also the machine of cultural enigma,and only these two copies exist together can constitute a complete man.Such mysticism theory is not so much the promotion of social and cultural evoluti

11、on as communication based on replication and communication cognition.In a word,foreign research on enigma is a conceptual expression of cultural replication similar to gene replication of thousands of organisms,and a genomics of the social transmission process of culture,which has a clear significan

12、ce and influence on the study of the evolution of human culture.The study of Enigma touches the deep nature of human culture from the perspective of cultural formation and transmission,because people can choose and improve their own culture in the process of transmitting and copying culture.As Dawki

13、ns puts it:We are the only people in the world who can resist the tyranny of selfish gene duplication.It can be said that the emergence of enigma is an important window for contemporary Darwinists to explain thousands of cultures.Contemporary Darwinian evolution of the theory of direct reference to

14、the discourse of human cultural evolution,the evolution of the human culture as a kind of similar to the process of biological evolution,and use modern genetic science of the genetic theory,to strengthen the social and cultural evolution theory,the mystery is in this context of a cultural metaphors

15、appear.The original purpose of this metonymy was to hope that the existence of something like genes in human culture would correct the flaws in human biology.However,there is a basic concept of replacement,that is,the concept of selfish social ethics,replaced by the biological gene replication and r

16、eplication selection concept.Therefore,in a sense,Dawkins description of biological genes as selfish and the significance of human cultural evolution is also problematic.In short,since the appearance of the word Enigma in 1976,foreign research on enigma has been carried out around the mechanism of c

17、ultural replication and transmission,and carefully restricted on the path of cultural communication and transmission,which is a kind of inter-academic communication in the sense of communication.Cultural gene research in China is widely carried out,both in the sense of communication and in the sense

18、 of cultural structure.In 1981,after Dawkins book the Selfish Gene was translated into Chinese,Mymee soon became a synonym for memes as understood by The Chinese people,and it was widely spread and applied.Mi Wenping and Liu Changlin used the term memes earlier.After the hail storm,there were three

19、kinds of academic groups in China conducting research on cultural genes:philosophical scholars and theoretical scholars,such as Liu Changlin,etc.,used the theory of cultural genes to promote the evolution of social culture and cultural history scholars,such as Liu Zhihui,etc.,sorted out the pedigree

20、 of traditional culture and discussed the significance of cultural genes from the perspective of cultural inheritance.Ethnic scholars and cultural anthropologists,such as Xu Jieshun,believe that there are natural factors in the structure of human culture and they can influence the basic existence of

21、 culture in China.At present,there are two ways to study culture-related genes.The other is the cultural gene research,which is influenced by the development of genetic science and mainly consists of ethnographers and cultural anthropologists.Both of these studies regard their own research as cultur

22、al gene research.The former focuses on the study of thinking mode and believes that only in the field of philosophy can the basic factors of culture be involved.The latter focuses on the structure of culture and explores whether there is a structure similar to thousands of genes in such a structure,

23、so as to discuss the universality in the deepest level of human culture.It is difficult to understand the basic nature of culture and construct the cultural gene map in the study of cultural genes that emphasizes replication and transmission,and there is no way to solve the problem of the meaning an

24、d path of cultural man in the future.The study of cultural genes starting from philosophy,which emphasizes the mode of thinking,does not involve the basic nature of cultural structure,and is unable to solve many fundamental problems in the study of cultural genes.In fact,the study of the so-called c

25、ultural basic factors is far from the study of cultural structure.From the perspective of cultural anthropology,this paper attempts to reveal and initiate a new cultural gene research,in order to seek the most initial universal significance structure in human culture.This kind of structure can gener

26、ally affect the basic construction and expression of human culture,and can be recognized and expressed in the most initial state,which is of fundamental significance to all types of human culture.structural anthropology and the cognition and expression of cultural genes In 1865,Mendels genetic idea

27、was a mere product of logical reasoning.This great idea became a science in the early 20th century when geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgans experiments on drosophila genetics proved it.With the development of molecular genetics,especially the double helix theory,people really understand the nature of gen

28、es.Genes are a basic way of representing the existence of biological nature.This kind of understanding is of great enlightening significance to thousands of human cultures.In cultural anthropology,there are two views on cultural similarity:one is that cultural similarity is brought by cultural commu

29、nication;One is that cultural similarity comes from similar historical stages of development.The former leads to the theory of cultural center,the latter to the theory of cultural relativity.In such a discussion,the concept of cultural circle and cultural area is involved,that is,a cultural body exi

30、sts in a certain category and manifests itself as a form,and the concept of cultural circle and cultural area itself also has similar meanings.Under the enlightenment of human biological gene science,we can boldly put forward such a question or hypothesis:why is cultural similarity not caused by the

31、 existence of a cultural gene?Human history goes back tens of thousands of years,as does the history of civilization,which can be written down directly.In this process,human culture has also accumulated or evolved many replicating fragments similar to DNA.Of course,such cultural replication is not t

32、he same thing as DNA replication.In a sense,this idea of memes has been shown to a certain extent in the history of cultural anthropology,that is,structural anthropology.It can be said that the emergence of structural anthropology opened the cultural anthropology from the perspective of cultural gen

33、es in the study of human culture.The structuralist school came into being in the 1940s and 1950s.Structuralists believe that there is a real social structure hidden behind the surface structure of human society and culture,and the task of anthropological research is to analyze,explain and reveal thi

34、s structure and reveal the structure of human thinking by means of establishing patterns.The representative figures of structuralism are mainly the French anthropologist Levi-Strauss,and the English anthropologist Leach is also regarded as one of the representatives.Structuralism began with linguist

35、ic analysis,and cultural anthropologists use it mainly in the study of marriage and ritual.Structuralism is,above all,a methodology.Just as Saussure and others applied structuralism to linguistics,Levi-Strauss also applied structuralism to cultural anthropology and made remarkable achievements,makin

36、g structuralism anthropology one of the most influential schools of cultural anthropology in the 20th century.According to Levi-Strauss,society is composed of cultural relations,which are manifested in various cultural activities,namely material production and spiritual thinking activities.There is

37、a basic factor running through all these activities-codes(symbols).Different types or mentalities are the different arrangements and combinations of these codes.Through his in-depth study of kinship,thinking patterns and mythological systems,he tried to find out the thinking structures and principle

38、s that were generally valid for the minds of all mankind(different peoples,different ages).He believed that in human culture,the universal structure deep in the human mind works unconsciously.In the expression of structuralist anthropology,we can see such an effort to find a structure that can expla

39、in the basic laws and factors of human culture in human society and culture,and answer the question whether there is something similar to biological genes in human culture,so as to understand human culture more profoundly.While it is difficult to say that we have found a form that accurately describ

40、es cultural DNA fragments,there is no doubt that these efforts in structural anthropology are already moving in this direction.Of course,we may never be able to describe it accurately,because the core of human culture is conceptual and spiritual from content to form.In the expression of structuralis

41、t anthropology,the existence of codes is bound to move towards structure.Regarding a series of cultural manifestations as a series of codes,it must involve the meaning of structure.In the eyes of Levi-Strauss,things exist in apposition one by one and show its cultural significance in this way.When a

42、 opposable thing loses its original opposable thing,it can gain a new opposable thing,thus producing a new cultural interpretation and new cultural significance.Can such a structure be regarded as an expression of cultural gene double helix?Under the guidance of Saussures study,the study of human cu

43、lture turned to symbols.The emergence of semiotics gave people a sense of codes in the cognition of human culture,that is,human culture can be regarded as a series of codes in which people can understand everything of human culture.This code consciousness enables people to abstract a series of code

44、in the general text,establish code system,and then to separate culture,establish code text,analyze and study culture.This is an attempt of cultural coding,which is a bit tedious and complicated,more like a cultural game of some wise men,but its cultural orientation is correct,and cultural research n

45、eeds such coding.Because the form in which a memes exist(if indeed it can be accurately described)should be a set of cultural codes.It is not necessarily the coding arrangement of biological genes,and it does not necessarily have the exact replication function and the original kinetic energy of self

46、-replication as biological genes.It is important to have a deep understanding of culture and its meaning in such an understanding,rather than simply making imaginative analogies to the self-replicating function of biological genes.Cultural anthropology and the cognition and expression of cultural ge

47、nes The development of modern natural science and social science has provided certain possibility for the description of the genealogy of human cultural gene structure.At least on some of the basic points of human cultural development,research has made remarkable progress.Significant progress in the

48、 study of human origins,as well as cultural evolution,acculturation,transfer,duplicate,coding issues in-depth discussions and so on,to a certain extent for todays theory and practice of new cultural gene to do the best preparation,because these studies mainly focus on the problems and human culture

49、is the cultural nature of the basic structure of the problem.Structuralist anthropology discusses the structure of culture and reveals its basic forms.This is the dawn of the new theory of memes,which shows that human culture can be understood from the perspective of memes.From the perspective of cu

50、ltural anthropology,it can be considered that human culture is formed by human structure and is the product of human structure.Therefore,human culture can be studied by analyzing its structure.The structural analysis of Levi-Strauss only finds and analyzes the structural nature of human culture in m