Culture

History and Background

Human curiosity about culture has a long history as Herodotus's History in Greek antiquity and Chunqiu in early China clearly attest. Nonetheless, contemporary academic and popular discourse about culture has its roots in the 18th-century Western European discourse of what is loosely known as the Enlightenment, an intellectual [Page 181]movement away from religious dogmas and superstitious beliefs and customs, and its counterpoint, sometimes called the Counter-Enlightenment or Romanticism. Enlightenment thinkers (e.g., Voltaire) emphasized civilization and human progress driven by the natural and universal human capacity to reason. Rationality, and natural science seen as its epitome, is to enlighten humans away from their superstitions, irrational prejudices, and traditional rulers of the ancient régime. Politically, it was a liberal movement to emancipate people from the traditional power; epistemically, it was an empiricist push for knowledge on the basis of systematic observation of the universe. In contrast, the Counter-Enlightenment or Romantic thinkers (e.g., Johann Gottfried Herder) pit culture against universal civilization, claiming the uniqueness and particularity of a people, their history, and their tradition. A people—often equated with a nation—constructs their culture, using their unique language and following their unique customs. Because they constitute their culture and culture constitutes their mentality, it is only through a deep understanding of their culture that one can fathom their thoughts and their way of life. Politically, it was often associated with nationalism; epistemically, it was aligned with an achievement of Verstehen (understanding) rather than experimentation.

Tension between these contrasting views took the form of an epistemological and methodological controversy between those who favor natural science versus cultural science models of inquiry throughout the history of social sciences. The natural science model is now seen to represent a constellation of epistemic practices that emphasize universal laws, causal explanation, and experimentation. Its primary goal is to establish a universal law-like causal explanation of a phenomenon. Using logico-mathematical expressions, universal natural laws are to be axiomatized, theory-based hypothetico-deductive inferences are made, and experiments are conducted to verify or falsify theories. In contrast, the cultural science model emphasizes cultural and historical specificity, interpretive understanding, and hermeneutics (i.e., a method and discipline to gain a true meaning of a text) rather than experimentation as a method of knowing. According to the cultural science model, human experience and action are interpreted and understood within their sociocultural and historical context. A deep understanding is sought by recursively applying a hermeneutic method and achieving a holistic appreciation of the meaning of the human experience and action within their local milieu.

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