The Nature of Culture

I NTRODUCTION. Culture is a much used and abused term. Different writers deliberately use the term to indicate radically different realities and even when they seem to intend to indicate the same realities they often vary equally as much. This is no startling discovery but it is a situation which calls for at least a brief, systematic and fundamental exposition in view of the importance that the term has been given in the literature of the social sciences. Certainly a clear statement of the kinds of agreement and disagreement that exist among definitions of the term is the first step in systematically promoting agreement to whatever extent it is now warranted. We propose here to achieve such an exposition without devising a fundamentally new definition of the term. The most generally accepted technical synoptical definitions of the term culture are likely to be defended on two scores: (i) that they have been put to very fruitful use and (2) that examination of contexts shows social scientists to be far more agreed regarding the nature of the realities denoted by the term than is reflected in the synoptical definitions. But such defenses are flimsy indeed. For much of the apparent fruitfulness of the definitions has been due to the fact that, once submitted, they have been complied with or ignored according to the convenience of their sponsors; and, in science, contextual agreement among writers does not compensate for crudities of slipshod synoptical definition. The distinctive feature of a scientific definition is its high instrumental value and this derives from the fact that it either constitutes or can fit into a scientific system, or both. Satisfactory scientific synoptical definitions can be

Epistemology · Exposition (narrative · Literature · Sociology · Statement (logic · Term (time · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Psychology · scientometrics and bibliometrics research · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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