Culturology as a humanities science about the general laws of cultural development took shape in the works of the American scientist Leslie White. The formation of cultural science as a science continues today. The search for methods, forms, definitions - all this indicates a certain immaturity of it, but at the same time it suggests that this science has gone from philosophy into an independent discipline, although it continues to actively interact with it through the philosophy of culture.
The connection between philosophy and cultural studies is quite complex, due to mutual influence and interaction. This is due to the fact that the problems of the theory of culture initially developed within the framework of philosophy, and some individual disciplines of cultural studies under its strong influence.
Toward the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of culture begins to take shape in philosophy, which is associated with a departure from reflection and an increasing desire to describe what culture is. Moving away from a critical and symbolic attitude to culture, philosophy begins, based on ethnographic and anthropological data, to model and predict the development of culture. With the development of description methods and the appearance of the first descriptions of culture, a new science of cultural studies arises.
However, due to the fact that this science is young, there are many of its interpretations and definitions of them, 3 main ones can be distinguished.
- Culturology is a complex of disciplines studying culture. The essence is the study of historical development to understand its systemic understanding.
- Culturology - a set of different directions studying culture one way or another: sociology of culture, philosophy of culture, culture anthropology, etc.
- Culturology is a science that studies culture. In this regard, has its own subject of study, methods and forms.
The subject of cultural studies are various concepts with the help of which this science describes and studies reality.
The subject of cultural studies is the processes and phenomena that occur in society and are directly related to its culture.
And also the subject of cultural studies is the features and specifics of modern civilization, its essence and specificity.
At the same time, the subject of cultural studies is the differences in local cultures of individual regions, their development and interchangeability at various stages of historical development.
The process of human development, structure, essence and patterns - this is also the subject of study of cultural studies.
Thus, culturology studies all the phenomena of spiritual and material culture. What constitutes a phenomenon of spiritual culture can be considered by the example of an icon. So, the word "icon", translated from Greek, means an image, an image. It usually depicts either the face of a saint, or some event from a sacred history. However, the traditional manner of depiction is minimized to the details of the material world, concentrating all attention on the spiritual. The icon serves as a cult object.
Material life includes daily life: food, its preparation and raw materials, natural needs, etc. Although the division of culture into spiritual and material is rather arbitrary. So at one time in Russia there were many prohibitions on the use of food in accordance with biblical instructions. For example, there was a strict ban on the use of burbot (they do not have scales), crayfish and potatoes, which were called "damn eggs." Based on these prohibitions on eating potatoes, a wave of peasant riots took place in the Perm Region last year. Although there are currently no such prohibitions.
Studying the phenomena of material and spiritual culture, culturology reveals its laws.