文化吸引模型:文化进化的“重构性”解释方法

The Cultural Attraction Model:a“Reconstructive”Approach to Explaining Cultural Evolution

文化的进化机制包含“保存性”和“重构性”两种解释路径,前者主要借助生物进化思想描述文化进化,但其不恰当的过度类比简化了文化进化的复杂性和社会性;后者运用认知科学、系统科学等自然科学方法解释文化,认为文化进化是个体在一定群体范围内对包含具体内容和意义的文化项目的持续重构。文化吸引模型基于复杂系统科学提出了“文化吸引子”概念用以描述文化进化过程,指出文化进化始于个体对文化项目的重构,进而围绕文化吸引子,文化项目的变体以大概率相似和小幅重构的形式“再传播”,其出现频率的相对增加,最终形成了具有稳定性和相对明确方向的文化进化路径。在这个过程中,文化项目传播相似性较大的原因并非保存和复制,而是以转化概率较低的表现形式重构后的“再传播”。文化吸引模型揭示了新的文化进化机制,在实证层面得到了一定程度的分析验证,有力支持了“重构性”文化解释路径,代表了文化研究中自然主义解释方法的新趋势,同时也成为研究文化和其他社会现象重要的新工具。

The evolutionary mechanism of culture contains two explanatory paths:“preservative”and“reconstruc⁃tive”.The former mainly describes cultural evolution with the help of the idea of biological evolution,but its inap⁃propriate over-analogy simplifies the complexity and sociality of cultural evolution.The latter uses the methods of cognitive science,systems science and other natural science to explain culture,and believes that cultural evolution is the continuous reconstruction of cultural items containing specific contents and meanings by individuals within a certain group.Based on complex systems science,the cultural attraction model proposes the concept of“cultural attractors”to describe the process of cultural evolution,pointing out that cultural evolution begins with the recon⁃struction of cultural items by individuals,and then around the cultural attractors,the variants of cultural items are“re-propagated”in the form of high probability of similarity and small reconstruction.The relative increase in the frequency of their appearance eventually forms a path of cultural evolution with stability and a relatively clear direc⁃tion.In this process,the greater similarity in the spread of cultural items is not due to preservation and reproduc⁃tion,but rather to“re-propagation”in the form of reconfigured manifestations with a lower probability of transfor⁃mation.The cultural attraction model reveals a new mechanism of cultural evolution,which has been empirically verified to a certain extent,and strongly supports the“reconstructive”path of cultural explanation,representing a new trend of naturalistic explanatory methods in cultural research,and becoming an important new tool for the study of culture and other social phenomena.