Culturomics: Taking the cross-scale, interdisciplinary science of culture into the next decade

Abstract

Culture is a complex topic involving a comprehensive representation of human institutions, social customs, norms, and lifestyles. Over the past half-century, the methods of cultural studies have improved dramatically in the depth of the research questions posed. However, most contemporary research on cultural issues is conducted from a single perspective, which fails to account for the holistic and extensive nature of culture. The development of culture is influenced by various factors, encompassing not only the humanistic environment but also factors related to the natural environment and socio-economic conditions. Hence, culture involves multiple concepts with associated levels and dimensions, such as genes, molecules, brains, individuals, groups, institutions, societies, and political environments. Therefore, we propose the concept of Culturomics, a cross-level, interdisciplinary science that studies human behavior and cultural representation in high-order space. Under this concept, it is necessary to find new methods to compare multidimensional data from different levels directly. In this paper, we first review past cultural studies, then introduce the concept, research content, and methodology of Culturomics, and discuss future directions for this field.

Keywords: Culturomics; cross-level interdisciplinary science; representation similarity analysis.