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{{Definitional Topic

|Topic Type=Definitional|Description=''Sociocultural factors'' is one of the key concepts in current scientonomy. Thus, its proper definition is of great importance.

|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]]  In his article ''External and Internal Factors in the Development of Science'', [[Dudley Shapere]] argues for the formation of disciplinary boundaries within the sciences as a necessary prerequisite for a distinction between intellectual and sociocultural factors. He argues that first, the knowledge-seeking enterprise of science was broken up into a multitude of small specialized disciplines, each smaller discipline with its own laws that dictated the behaviour of particular phenomena. Following from here, scientists in the nineteenth-century began to unify the multitude of smaller disciplines under general laws or ''Grand-Unified Theories'', which were all conceptually and logically compatible with each other. Once scientific sub-disciplines were able to be demarcated as either scientific or non-scientific. Once an idea of what constituted as ''science'' was formed, it was possible for scientists to label all other disciplines that had not made the ''internal'' cut as ''external'' to the scientific enterprise.[[CiteRef::Shapere (1986)]]  The logical positivists were the first to distinguish influences derived from propositions within the sciences as ''internal'' factors, and all other influences originating in the realm of society as ''external'' factors.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 233]] [[Karl Popper]] also used the terms ''external'' and ''internal'' when discussing sociocultural factors, and mainly discussed the role of the external factors on theory construction.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 233]] In 1970, [[Imre Lakatos]] suggested that what constitutes as ''external'' and what is ''internal'' is defined by the methodology of the time. "External history either provides non-rational explanation of the speed, locality, selectiveness etc. of historic events as interpreted in terms of internal history", Lakatos writes in his ''History of Science and its Rational Reconstruction'', "or, when history differs from its rational reconstruction, it provides an empirical explanation of why it differs. But the rational aspect of scientific growth is fully accounted for by one's logic of scientific discovery."[[CiteRef::Lakatos (1971a)|pp. 105-106]] [[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.|Current View=The term is only loosely described in ''The Laws of Scientific Change'' as encompassing all of the non-epistemic factors that affect scientific change including political, religious, economic, and social factors, as well as group and individual interests.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|pp. 233-234]] A more precise definition is needed.