Culture and man in the mirror of semiotic-environmental approach

This article offers the concept of culture based on the authorial version of semiotic and environmental approach. The stages of the author’s culturological research are outlined: from the semiotic concepts of “Moscow Methodological Group" to the extensive interpretation of semiotic and environmental approach, in which the core of semiosis is the patterns, and namely semiosis sets the human living environment. Based on these facts, a new interpretation of culture is proposed. At the same time, the author differentiates two types of cultures: 1) the main subject is the social collective and collective individual inseparable from the collective; 2 a person appears on the scene of history, and culture consists of the three types of individuals ‒ collective individuals, individuals, and intermediaries between individuals and collective individuals. It is underlined that since the antique culture, an important role in cultures is played by intermediaries (philosophers, pedagogues, politicians, artists), as well as by various forms of communication. Antique culture also marks differentiation of two forms of world development, one based on the creation of patterns, and the other – on modeling and scientific examination (the latter includes schematization of reality as one of essential moments). Leaning on such division, the author discusses the peculiarities of patterns and models, as well as cognition based on modeling. The theoretical and methodological reasoning and hypotheses are confirmed by the analysis of cases and structuring of methodological patterns. The article provides a sketch of the genesis of cultures from antiquity to modernity, and crisis of the latter.