Changes

|Question=What are '''sociocultural factors?''' How should they be ''defined?''

|Topic Type=Definitional

|Formulated Year=2016

|Prehistory=In the Aristotelian-Medieval mosaic, the Cartesian mosaic, and much of the Newtonian mosaic, scientists were for the most part strictly rationalist — a view which dictates that scientific beliefs are a consequence only of reason and evidence.[[CiteRef::Brown (2001)|p. 150]],[[CiteRef::Shapere (1986)|p. 4]] The distinction between intellectual and sociocultural influences in science were not clearly defined, as there were not yet disciplinary boundaries within the sciences. Many factors that influenced scientific change that we now consider to be ''sociocultural'' organically fell under the rationalist umbrella within this highly holistic enterprise of knowledge-seeking.[[CiteRef::Shapere (1986)|p. 4]]

[[Hakob Barseghyan]] agrees with Lakatos in ''The Laws of Scientific Change'' that only a theory of scientific change can tell us which factors are factors are internal to science and which external.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 234]] However, he argues that if we were to define ''sociocultural factors'' as all those factors that are external to scientific change, then the whole question of the role of sociocultural factors would become vacuous; by definition, those factors would never be able to influence scientific change. Therefore, ''sociocultural factors'' cannot be defined in terms of ''external'' factors. It is due to this that the [[Community:Scientonomy|Scientonomy community]] doesn't use the terms ''internal'' and ''external'' to describe intellectual and sociocultural factors.

|Related Topics=Role of Sociocultural Factors in Method Employment, Role of Sociocultural Factors in Scientific Change, Role of Sociocultural Factors in Theory Acceptance,

|Page Status=Needs Editing