Material culture as a design and functional organoprojection

Abstract

The article defines the specifics and structure of things as a type of cultural artefacts. The author considers the thing to be the result of the practical construction of the world, where construction is expressed as the transformation of nature into culture. The construction in question is carried out on the basis of two generative models — the value model and the utilitarian one. Both models are aimed at creating a world acceptable to humans, but do it in different ways. The value model connects the transformed world with the meaning of human life. The utilitarian model, in contrast, adapts the world to the objective and specific requirements of a person so that to allow him to exist in this world, while a person himself adapts to the objective conditions of the world in which he begins to live. The role of the value model varies in different time periods but never ceases to exist. The utilitarian model, however, always has the primary importance. It is shown that material culture exists in the form of a means for solving certain tasks facing a person and posed by him. The morphology of material culture is based on a functional understanding of its organoprojective nature. The category of organoprojection is defined as the totality of means for increasing the effectiveness of an organ of the human body. The nature of the connection between a body organ and a material instrument is considered as the functional dependence of the latter on the former. The article identifies six key functions of organoprojection: access to the world, surface transformation of the world, deep transformation of the world, protection from the world, replenishment of energy and restoration of the human body, and reproduction. Each function has been studied as the specifics of one or another type of artefacts of material culture: communicative technology and transport, landscape and domestics, utensils and implements, costume, housing and weapons, diet and medicines.