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Classical sociologists like Max Weber and Robert K. Merton represent the first wave of theorists to define scientific communities as objects of study. The likes of Weber and Merton adopted a normative approach towards analyzing scientific communities – they described how the scientific community ought to conduct research. Weber’s stance on scientific communities is known through his lecture “Science as a vocation”, in which he analyzed science from the perspective of its value as a profession .[[CiteRef::Weber (1946)]]. Similarly, Merton defined scientific communities according to a so-called ''ethos of science''. For Merton, the ethos consists of four norms: universalism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism .[[CiteRef::Merton (1938)]]. In both cases, we can see that the earliest interpretations of scientific communities studied them normatively, rather than descriptively. Additionally, the first wave of theoreticians accepted that the overarching scientific community, encompassing all scientists, formed a singular sociological object.

The second wave of theorists to study scientific communities effectively denied the unity of an overarching scientific community, adopting instead an analytic framework based in incommensurability. Thomas Kuhn popularized such analyses of scientific communities, suggesting that scientific communities are only capable of communicating with and understanding others within the same community and by extension, the same paradigm; cross-community discussions could only lead to misunderstandings. Kuhn’s interpretation of scientific communities – indeed, of science more generally – was highly influenced by Ludwig Fleck who, in the 1930s, proposed the notion of a ''thought collective'' acting according to a shared ''thought style'' .[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]]. A thought collective is a group that shares a thought style, through which Fleck held that scientific facts are socially constructed. For both Kuhn and Fleck, scientific communities emerged from such specific contexts that they developed a way of thinking only shared by those in the same context and community.

The third wave of theories about scientific communities arose out of the realization that scientific communities could be divided into such small units of analysis that the concept of scientific community would become nearly meaningless. Theoreticians of the third wave either regarded scientific community as a mere metaphor or accepted that only highly localized, micro scientific communities existed. In the former case, sociologists like Karin Knorr-Cetina argued that scientific communities did not actually exist, rather they were “taxonomic collectives” or theoretical constructs imposed onto a group that did not recognize itself as such .[[CiteRef::Knorr-Cetina (1982)]]. In the latter case, sociologists like Peter Galison did not deny the existence of scientific communities, but acknowledged that meaningful scientific practice arose only out of collaboration and competition between micro-communities (Galison).

''Scientific community'' lacks a formal definition in scientonomy. It continues to be referred to as “the bearer of a scientific mosaic”. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.249]] Yet the concept remains fundamental to the field. For, every time a scientonomist refers to a [[Theory|theory]] that is [[Theory Acceptance|accepted]] or a [[Method|method]] that is [[Method Employment|employed]], they actually mean a theory accepted or a method employed ''by the scientific community''.