The Origin and Cultural Evolution of East Asian Cognitive Style: A Case Study of the Book of Changes (Yijing 易經)

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 389-413
Author(s):  
Ryan Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Book Of Changes

Abstract Experimental tests about cross-cultural differentiation of cognitive style conclude that East Asian and Western cognition differ. Tendencies described as East Asian include holism, non-linearity, expectation of change, relationalism, field dependence, causal pluralism, dialecticism, and a tolerance of contradiction. Cross-cultural psychologists generally refrain from discussing the intellectual history or cultural evolution of these differences, preferring to explain results on cognitive scales in terms of results on social scales assessed using present-day participants. The present article attempts to partially close this explanatory gap through detailed discussion of tendencies of East Asian cognitive style as represented in what is probably the most influential book in the history of East Asia, The Book of Changes. This study purports to show (a) that the content of the Yijing 易經 and its commentaries is best described in terms of the cognitive tendencies just mentioned, (b) that reading the Yijing activated those cognitive tendencies, and (c) that the Yijing attained prodigious influence on subsequent Chinese and East Asian cultures through four known mechanisms of cultural transmission. Informed by this case study, researchers of cross-cultural cognition may be positioned to develop a richer appreciation of the cultural representation and evolution of East Asian cognitive style in historical context.

scholarly journals Understanding Jerusalem and its Cross-Cultural Dilemmas in Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria Gavrilă
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
National Stereotypes ◽  
Holy City

Abstract Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City (2011) is a nonfictional graphic novel which narrates the experiences during a year that the Canadian artist and his family spent living far from home, in the occasionally dangerous and perilous city of the ancient Middle East. Part humorous memoir filled with “the logistics of everyday life,” part an inquisitive and sharp-eyed travelogue, Jerusalem is interspersed with enthralling lessons on the history of the region, together with vignettes of brief strips of Delisle’s encounters with expatriates and locals, with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in and around the city, with Bedouins, Israeli and Palestinians. Since the comic strip is considered amongst the privileged genres able to disseminate stereotypes, Jerusalem tackles cultural as well as physical barriers, delimiting between domestic and foreign space, while revealing the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian present conflict. Using this idea as a point of departure, I employ an imagological method of interpretation to address cross-cultural confusions in analysing the cartoonist’s travelogue as discourse of representation and ways of understanding cultural transmission, paying attention to the genre’s convention, where Delisle’s drawing style fits nicely the narrative techniques employed. Through an imagological perspective, I will also pay attention to the interaction between cultures and the dynamics between the images which characterise the Other (the nationalities represented or the spected) and those which characterise - not without a sense of irony - his own identity (self-portraits or auto-images). I shall take into account throughout my analysis that the source of this graphic memoir is inevitably a subjective one: even though Delisle professes an unbiased mind-set from the very beginning, the comic is at times coloured by his secular views. Delisle’s book is a dark, yet gentle comedy, and his wife’s job at the Doctors Without Borders paired with his personal experiences are paradoxically a gentle reminder that “There’ll always be borders.” In sum, the comic medium brings a sense of novelty to the imagological and hermeneutic conception of the interpretation of cultural and national stereotypes and/or otherness in artistic and literary works.

scholarly journals Melodic Universals Emerge or Are Sustained Through Cultural Evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Verhoef ◽  
Andrea Ravignani
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Iterated Learning ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
Musical Systems ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
The Way

To understand why music is structured the way it is, we need an explanation that accounts for both the universality and variability found in musical traditions. Here we test whether statistical universals that have been identified for melodic structures in music can emerge as a result of cultural adaptation to human biases through iterated learning. We use data from an experiment in which artificial whistled systems, where sounds produced with a slide whistle were learned by human participants and transmitted multiple times from person to person. These sets of whistled signals needed to be memorised and recalled and the reproductions of one participant were used as the input set for the next. We tested for the emergence of seven different melodic features, such as discrete pitches, motivic patterns, or phrase repetition, and found some evidence for the presence of most of these statistical universals. We interpret this as promising evidence that, similarly to rhythmic universals, iterated learning experiments can also unearth melodic statistical universals. More, ideally cross-cultural, experiments are nonetheless needed. Simulating the cultural transmission of artificial proto-musical systems can help unravel the origins of universal tendencies in musical structures.

scholarly journals Cultural Evolutionary Neuroscience

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryutaro Uchiyama ◽  
Michael Muthukrishna
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Neuroscience ◽  
Gene Frequencies ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
And Function ◽  
Evolutionary Neuroscience

Cultural evolution and cultural neuroscience are complementary approaches to understanding the origins and function of cross-cultural differences in psychology. Cultural evolution, and Dual Inheritance Theory more generally, offers a theoretical framework for understanding cultural transmission and cultural change and how these can change gene frequencies. However, these theories have largely ignored the details of the minds engaging in these processes. Cultural evolutionary models tend to treat the brain as a black-box. Cultural neuroscience offers a rich toolkit for examining how cross-cultural psychological differences manifest at a neurological level. However, these tools have largely been used to document differences between populations. Cultural neuroscience tends to ignore why we should expect these differences or how to identify if they are meaningful. We review work in each field to carve a pathway for a productive synthesis. This cultural evolutionary neuroscience will benefit both fields and lead to a more complete understanding of human culture.

Sociocultural memory development research drives new directions in gadgetry science

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Van Bergen ◽  
John Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Memory Development ◽  
Development Research ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Cross Cultural Research

Abstract Sociocultural developmental psychology can drive new directions in gadgetry science. We use autobiographical memory, a compound capacity incorporating episodic memory, as a case study. Autobiographical memory emerges late in development, supported by interactions with parents. Intervention research highlights the causal influence of these interactions, whereas cross-cultural research demonstrates culturally determined diversity. Different patterns of inheritance are discussed.

From Persianate pasts to Aryan antiquity. Transnationalism and transformation in Afghan intellectual history, c.1880–1940

Afghanistan ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-67
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Archaeological Methods ◽  
Subsequent Rise ◽  
Intellectual Disciplines

This essay forms a case study of the transnational dimensions of Afghanistan's modern intellectual history through a focus on the practice of history. It traces the development of Afghan historical writing between around 1880 and 1940, with an emphasis on the revolutionary historiographical transformations of the 1930s. Prior to this decade, Afghan historians broadly continued the dynastic and genealogical traditions of the Persianate tarikh (‘chronicle’). After discussing several such texts, the focus turns to the new intellectuals associated with the Kabul Literary Society (Anjuman-i Adabi-yi Kabul) in its role as a crossroads for the importation and adaptation of European intellectual disciplines. Drawing on Anglophone and Francophone scholarship in their Dari-Persian publications, the Society's historians forged radically new conceptions of collective identity by adapting European linguistic and archaeological methods. An examination of the writings of two such historians, Ya‘qub Hasan Khan and Ahmad ‘Ali Kuhzad, documents the subsequent rise of the new historical ideology of Aryanism by which Afghanistan and its peoples were linked to the ancient Aryans and their homeland of Bactria qua Aryana.

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