Abstract
The concept of culturology was introduced into social sciences in the 1st half of the 20th century by an American cultural anthropologist Leslie A. White.
According to White, the subject of culturology is the study of culture as a relatively independent extrasomatic layer of reality – a phenomenon “sui generis”, which advances with its own laws independently on man. Contemporary culturology is not a simple revival of L.A.
White`s ideas but it first of all represents a reaction on a constantly growing differentiation, specialization and disintegration of human, social and cultural sciences. Modern culturology is based on a global anthropological understanding of culture as a system of meta-biological means and mechanisms, through which a man adapted to the outer environment.