Cultural life: Theory and empirical testing.

Area of Science:

• Interdisciplinary studies bridging physics, biology, and cultural science.
• Theoretical and computational social sciences.
• Complex systems analysis.

Background:

• Erwin Schrödinger's concept of 'negative entropy' as fundamental to life inspired 20th-century biological research.
• Claude Shannon's 'information entropy' describes information loss in communication due to noise.
• The persistence of biological life despite entropy accumulation raises questions about cultural persistence.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore whether cultural life also 'negates' entropy in a manner analogous to biological life.
• To develop and test a new theory of culture based on variation-selection processes and homeostatic regulation.
• To uncover a potential equivalence between natural and cultural systems.

Main Methods:

• Development of a new theory of culture integrating variation-selection and homeostatic regulation.
• Analysis of big data, including news, magazines, books, TV transcripts, and social media content.
• Application of novel methods for extracting historical, institutional, and geographical information from data.
• Creation of interactive tools for interpreting results and evaluating 'cultural diversification cycles'.

Main Results:

• The proposed theory explains key cultural phenomena such as returning fashions, polarization, diversification, and cycles of growth and reform.
• A striking mathematical equivalence between nature and culture has been identified.
• The theory allows for live evaluation of 'cultural diversification cycles'.

Conclusions:

• Cultural life, similar to biological life, can persist and prevail despite the accumulation of entropy.
• The theory provides a scientific framework for understanding cultural dynamics and their relationship to natural processes.
• The identified mathematical equivalence aligns the humanities with scientific principles and enables quantitative analysis of cultural evolution.