Culture is a word that's frequently mentioned, associated with art, tradition and people. But what is it? Over the centuries, hundreds of scientists tried to capture its abstractness and transform it into a text.
"Culture" originates from the Latin verb "colere" (to till, farm, cultivate). Cicero used the agricultural metaphor "cultura animi" (cultivation of the soul) to describe the development of a philosophical soul.
If asked, you would likely define culture as music, literature, visual arts, architecture or language, and you wouldn't be wrong. But you wouldn't be entirely right either. In fact the things produced by a culture which we perceive with our five senses are simply manifestations of the deeper meaning of culture – what we do, think and feel.
What we do, think and feel - culture as a second "brain"?
Compared to the following listed definitions, this one is kept fairly general. However, it has yet to play an important role in the following text.
The definitions listed by CARLA and the two selected above all base on one basic idea: shared behavior.
A majority of the definitions implies the fact that culture separates groups.
And it separates them in a good way. If these separations did not exist or were not even required (in case there would not be something like "culture") – what would the world look like? This is a topic that is also part of the whole globalisation discourse. Many see a danger in cultural globalisation because of the possible adaptation to one ideal – the worry about a human unification. About a loss of a certain variety.
Culture is a preserver of everything that arouses our interest. We strive towards cultural manifestations because we want to discover, we want to be entertained. And culture is only the word for it – the thoughts behind that belong to us. Culture belongs to us ("what we do, think, and feel). That raises the question if we're born with the idea of culture, thus questions the definition of Gerald Weiss – is it really nongenetic?