The original meaning of "Wen" is "wrong painting", that is, pattern. In ancient Chinese, its meaning is extended: because patterns are always painted on the carrier, in the field of human cognition, "Wen" is extended to acquired morality and accomplishment, as opposed to "quality" which expresses innate quality. "The Analects of Confucius Yongye" once said: "Quality is better than literature, literature is better than history, gentle and gentle, and then a gentleman." This is a discussion about dealing with the relationship between the innate natural qualities of good people and the acquired artificial cultivation. In the political field, "Wen" is extended to "Hua", also known as Li Zhi, who advocates the use of culture to improve people's self-cultivation and stabilize the country, and opposes the "martial arts" of conquering other countries by force. China's understanding of "Wen" in ancient times is also reflected in the distinction between astronomy and humanities: "Yi Ben Gua" says: "Sages view astronomy to observe the changes of time; Look at humanity and turn it into the world. " Astronomy refers to natural phenomena and laws, while humanities refers to social phenomena and laws.

The original meaning of "Hua" is to change things. This change includes both creation from scratch and evolution and differentiation after the creation of the universe. The first word in Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi is "one", which is interpreted as "Tai Chi comes first, Tao stands in one, and heaven and earth are divided into all things". It is China's ancient theory of universe generation, and "division" and "achievement" are nature. In the changes after the occurrence of the universe, it is divided into natural evolution and artificial enlightenment. The medical work Yi Cohesion says: "In nature, like in the ground, changes are visible", which refers to the generation and evolution of nature. Xun's Yan Zi Bu says: "Honesty and benevolence lead to form, form leads to spirit, and spirit can be transformed", and the annotation says that "transformation means moving good" and "taming good means transforming" all refer to enlightenment. This series of concepts reflects China's unified but different observation methods of nature and human world in ancient times. However, there are many cases of enlightenment in ancient books. The Book of Rites, The Doctrine of the Mean, says that "if you can make good use of human nature, you can make good use of things", which shows that the starting point of China's ancient observation and transformation of the world is human nature.

The ancient people's understanding of culture also included old and new sports concepts. "Book of Rites. "The Doctrine of the Mean" says: "Honesty is form, form is action, action is change, change is change, and honesty is the only thing in the world." Note: "Touching people's hearts; Change, turn evil into good, and change for a long time will turn good. Sparse [1]: "At the beginning of change, the old and the new should be developed simultaneously, and the old should be transformed into the new", which includes both the idea of movement change and the idea of quantitative change to qualitative change. The qualitative change is called "transformation"

In China's classics, "culture" has been synthesized for a long time-"On Yuan Zhiwu": "Where martial arts are flourishing, it is impossible to do it; If the culture does not change, then it will be punished. " Combining the meanings of "culture" and "culture", we can see the early cultural meanings. China's classic "culture" refers to people's acquired cultivation and spiritual and material creation. Cultivation belongs to the category of transforming the subjective world, and creation belongs to the category of transforming the objective world.

Based on the traditional interpretation of China's concept of "culture", academic circles often translate it into English culture. The original meaning of culture refers to the material civilization created by mankind. Because material creation contains human wisdom, it is difficult to be completely divorced from spiritual civilization, so it has become synonymous with the word "culture". In fact, China's traditional concept of "culture" has not been translated by culture, and it has the concept of acquired creation and evolution and humanistic spirit, which is more suitable for the cultural connotation of culturology today.

2. Definition of broad culture and narrow culture

/kloc-The European Renaissance in the 0/9th century broke the rigid theology that bound human nature, brought people-centered ideological emancipation, and made people see the process of human social history. The "great geographical discovery" and the expansion of colonialism have made people feel the ethnic and regional differences in human society. These two points aroused the high enthusiasm of human beings to study themselves. Since the 20th century, with the increase of frequent international exchanges and sharp ethnic issues, people have become more and more interested in human research. In the past 200 years, cultural issues have gradually become the focus of people's attention, and "culture" has become a concept with richer connotation and wider extension in modern times. Because of the concern of many parties, the definition of cultural issues is also very different. According to statistics, there are more than one hundred definitions of "culture" in different disciplines, different purposes and different angles. Different cultural definitions will inevitably affect the research scope of culturology. However, many definitions of "culture", from a general point of view, are nothing more than narrow and broad definitions:

The broad definition of "culture" is based on the difference between human and non-human. Therefore, anthropology and cultural philosophy adopt a broad definition of "culture". Here, we give two broad definitions of encyclopedia to illustrate this argument. The general definition of culture in Encyclopedia Britannica 1974 is that culture is equivalent to "the whole heritage of human society". The Soviet Encyclopedia 1973 defines culture in a broad sense as: "(Culture) is a certain level of development of society and people in history, which is manifested in various types and forms of people's lives and activities, as well as the material and spiritual wealth created by people." In the book "The Cultural Spirit of China", Qian Mu summed up the broad sense of culture with a very vivid sentence: "Culture is a long-term collective life". [2] We put all kinds of broad cultural definitions together. It can be said that culture is the sum total of material and spiritual existence created by human beings in the long-term historical development. There are three points to grasp in this definition: (1) culture in a broad sense is related to human beings and their creative activities, and it is a people-centered concept; (2) Culture in a broad sense is a historical concept, which covers the whole process of human history and is a comprehensive concept of inheritance and development; (3) The extension of generalized culture covers all material and spiritual creations.

Culture in a narrow sense refers to the spiritual creation of human beings, which focuses on the psychological part of human beings. In fact, it is difficult for human culture to completely separate material creation from spiritual creation. All creations that exist in material form are condensed with the creator's thoughts, wisdom and will, and belong to the spirit. The purpose of establishing a narrow cultural concept is to exclude the purely materialized natural world and focus our attention on the people-centered world to observe human beings themselves. Culture in a narrow sense, also known as humanistic culture, is the overall system of humanistic spirit and its material embodiment naturally condensed by a social collective (nation or stratum) through inheritance and accumulation in the long-term historical development. This definition should also grasp three points: (1) narrow culture is not only people-centered, but also people's spiritual activities. Even if we observe the materialized world, it is also centered on humanistic spirit; (2) The narrow sense of culture focuses not on individual spiritual activities, but on the systematic humanistic spirit accumulated and condensed through historical inheritance; (3) Narrow culture not only pays attention to the universality of all mankind, but also pays attention to the humanistic spirit characteristics of different nationalities, classes and groups. Therefore, the definition of narrow culture is not only applicable to human culturology, but also to specific fields such as national culturology and national culturology.