How did Edward Burnett Tylor describe culture in 1871?

In his 1871 work Primitive Culture, the English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor provided a foundational definition of culture that remains widely cited in the field of anthropology. He described it as follows:

Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.12

This definition is significant for three primary reasons:
* It treats "culture" and "civilization" as interchangeable terms.1
* It emphasizes the importance of ethnography in studying human societies.1
* It highlights that culture consists of traits learned through social participation, rather than those transmitted through biological inheritance.1

By framing culture as a socially acquired "complex whole," Tylor helped establish the study of human lifeways as a scientific endeavor, moving beyond the narrow focus on refined arts to include the total social legacy of a human group.12