Cultural Heritage as a Self-Organising System: The Philosophy of Klironomy and the Formation of a New Science of Cultural Preservation in the 21st Century
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47451/phi2025-10-03Keywords:
cultural heritage, klironomy, self-organising system, philosophy of culture, digital civilisation, klironomical ontology, artificial intelligence and culture, evolution of cultural systems, human–AI cognitive partnership, preservation and transformation of cultureAbstract
In the context of rapid technological development and global cultural transformations, the problem of preserving cultural heritage acquires critical importance for the sustainability of civilisation. Contemporary approaches to cultural preservation, focused primarily on material conservation and institutional protection, fail to consider the processual and self-organising nature of heritage. This determines the relevance of the present research, which aims to formulate the philosophical foundations of a new metascience — klironomy, conceived as the study of cultural heritage as a living system capable of self-development and evolution. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the development of the concept of self-organising cultural heritage and the creation of a klironomical ontology of culture, which integrates philosophical, cultural, legal and technological approaches. The author introduces the category of self-organising heritage as the basis for a new model of preservation, in which culture is understood not as a static object of storage but as a dynamic system of meanings that sustains itself through communication, creativity and digital representation. The subject of the study is the philosophical comprehension of cultural heritage within the conditions of the digital civilisation, while the object of the study is cultural heritage itself as a self-organising system functioning within the technohumanitarian context of the 21st century. The study aims to elaborate the philosophical foundations of klironomy as an independent science capable of explaining the mechanisms of evolution, preservation and transformation of cultural heritage in the digital age. The methodological framework of the research includes general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, historical-genetic and systems approaches, together with specialised methods of philosophical hermeneutics, phenomenology of culture, axiology and synergetic analysis. These methods made it possible to reveal the regularities of self-organisation in cultural systems and to propose a holistic model of the klironomical ontology of culture. The study formulates the key principles of klironomical philosophy: continuity, self-organisation, multiplicity of being, and the co-creation of human and artificial intelligence. It demonstrates that the interaction between human beings and technologies forms a new type of cognitive partnership in which the preservation of culture is realised through intellectual and digital reproduction of meanings. A concept of klironomical education is proposed, aimed at forming a new generation of specialists — philosophers, analysts of cultural memory, and curators of digital heritage. The author’s main conclusions confirm the necessity of recognising klironomy as an autonomous metadiscipline integrating the humanitarian and technological domains of knowledge. Klironomy establishes a new perspective on cultural preservation — as a form of cultural evolution and creative self-maintenance. Culture is understood not as an archive of the past but as an active system of memory capable of sustaining its identity through constant interaction between human beings, society and artificial intelligence.
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