Research On Suzhou Ancient Urban Space From The Angle Of Culturgen

Cultuigen is the concept which results from the analogy with gene. While evolving from wildness to civilization, mankind progressively established the cultural fundamental factors which exist in the implicit form of values, thinking and religion which concerned with the mutual relations and orders between man and nature, man and man (society), and man and God (spirit and material). Such factors are regarded as culturgen, which stores up culture massages, and imply the cultural spread regulation. It is the differences of the different cultures that bring about the different routes into the civilization. As the symbol of the evolution of mankind from wildness to civilization, the city accompanies with civilization. The city space is the carrier of society, economy, culture, history and social activities of the city, and it is the space reflects of the extent of urban development, stage, and progress. It is not only the cultural product of human beings but also the carrier of the human culture. Being one type of the city space, the ancient city space has the general characters of the city space. It is the carrier of ancient urban society and cultural activities, which consists of Fu, Zhou, County, and towns after Song-Dynasty.Previously the research on the city space was based on the physical determinism which was mainly connected with geography and productivity, while summarizing culture into the group of spirit, and focusing the cognition on the cultural traditions and cultural phenomena. It kept the importance of influences of culture upon the city space from being revealed comprehensively. We are required to analyze the origin and evolution of the city space from the genetic perspective, based on the concept of culture as a whole(materially and spiritually). At present, however, researches on the culturgen and the city space are lack of contact. There are still lack of comprehensive and systematic research on the relations between them.In order to solve this problem, the author bases on the culturgen and illustrates that the culture spread has the similar characters with genetic spread, and culturgen dominatively affects the culture system, and it has the ability of genetic, variation, and choose. The author originally draws analogy between the relations of culturgen and the city space and that of genotype and memetype. By regarding the carrier of human culture——the city as the memetype of cultuegen, through the research on Wu-culture and Suzhou ancient urban space, the author verifies the internal relations between them. By making social investigation personally and careful study of historical documents, the author has got the first-hand materials. By using the theory of city science and memetics, combining the scientific achievements in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and sociology, applying the historical investigating method and horizontal comparative method, taking time and space as the main thread, the author diachronically and dynamically finds out the controlling systems and regularities of the culturgen and the city space.With time as a clue, the author diachronically reveals the corresponding relations between the variation of culturgen, changes of ancient Suzhou urban society, and evolution of the city space sturture and formation. With space as a clue, the author applies the system theory to analyze the dominative effect of the urban culturgen which focuses on the Confucion culture, and folk culturgen which focuses on the folk beliefs. Finally, the author philosophically reveals the corresponding relations of he culturgen and the city space, and the regularities of the evolution of urban space, from which the author draws conclusions and offers new ideas for entirely and continually protecting sustainable culture heritage.The dissertation consists of seven parts. Chapter 1 is Instruction, after sorting out and analyzing the related research achievements domestic and foreign, the author puts forward that the research on culturgen and city space has been done in isolation. Meanwhile the author sets forth the argument of the thesis, which is the internal relations between Wu-culture and Suzhou ancient urban space. In Chapter 2, by analyzing the connotation and characteristics of Wu-culturgen, the author finds out the functions it fulfilled on site-selecting, functional arranging, special structure and morphology of the Lingyan ancient city in the Spring-and-Autumn Dynasty, and then demonstrates their internal relations. In Chapter3,4,5, taking time as the main thread, the author takes Six-Dynasty, Song-Dynasty, Ming-Dynasty and Qing-Dynasty as example and analyzes how the Wu-culturgen affected and dominated the change of Suzhou ancient urban society and evolution of city space, and reveals their internal relations. In Chapter 6, taking space as the main thread, the author discusses how the folk believes as folk culturgen affected and dominated Suzhou ancient urban society and city space. Chapter 7 is Conclusion, in which the author concludes the dissertation and puts forward the advices for the following researches.The researches indicate that the controlling effects of Wu-culturgen on Suzhou ancient city space existed, and there existed organic corresponding relations between them. Socially and materially, culturgen plays a controlling role on city space. The variability of the culturgen is the internal impetus which motivates the change of urban society and evolution of city space.