Cognitive History and Cultural Epidemiology

Abstract

The cognitive history of science uses cognitive psychology as a source of information for historians about the thought processes available to scientists while scientific cognition is analyzed as it occurred in historical contexts: scientists are socially situated, and this situation accounts in part for their thoughts and behavior. The cognitive historian also attempts to account for the behavior of scientists by generating hypotheses about the cognitive processes that are actually implemented. Cultural epidemiology aims at describing the social cognitive causal chains out of which cultural items are being produced and distributed. It aims at specifying the behavioral and cognitive bases of cultural phenomena, and provides the conceptual tools for such inquiries. This chapter argues that studies of enculturation and of situated and distributed cognition can also integrate into and benefit from studies in cultural epidemiology.

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