What is culture by Definition?
Culture, based on Merriam-Webster Dictionary "is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations."
Culture, if thought about in great depth can be translated as beliefs and traditions developed throughout generations, or in other words, people forming their opinions with time and throughout generations. Much of this thought process can be compared to that of Joseph Henrich, who is currently an anthropologist professor for the university of Harvard. Henrich came up with a hypothesis stating that "the idea that the real driver in the expansion of human brains was this growing cumulative body of cultural information." This hypothesis concludes that as we store more and more information and transmit it to other generations, we begin to build what is now known as culture. His goal in this study was to convince individuals that they should stop differentiating culture and biological evolution as a separate, and think of them as biological evolution.
This building of traditions and beliefs can be thought about for example, as a simple carrying on of a chocolate chip cookie recipe. A recipe from the past, carried for about 100 years gets passed on to a daughter who changes the shape. Then gets passed on to a granddaughter, who adds something in addition and so on. As the recipe gets changed and carried throughout, it becomes a tradition and a combination of cultures, which then later on becomes part of one specific culture.
When looking at culture in great depth, the diversity in it becomes evident. In today's modern world people are able to find these answers due to biology, technological advances, and the study of past generations. What scientist have actually found is an understanding of humans trying to find out who they were themselves, and why they were there initially. These Questions and many more have had a great impact in why we have cultures and why they have such a great impact on our lives.
I enjoyed reading your post. It was interesting because who talked about cultures. You highlight the major parts of it. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteThis is a good post. You were detailed and it was overall interesting hearing about your topic. I liked how you defined what you believe culture is. I enjoyed reading this & and I loved your graphic. Great post!
ReplyDeleteAlso, be sure to add additional examples and your post will be even better. Good job
DeleteThis is a working start, but let's see actual examples that support your main assertions. What is it about technology, biology, and history that drive culture? What are the other questions that could be answered in a new post? Keep going and support those assertions!
ReplyDelete