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The recognition that scientific claims are true, meaningful, and valid only within specific contexts that must be specified. A finding from a lab in Sweden with undergraduate participants isn't automatically true for elderly farmers in Peru. A drug that works in controlled trials might fail in the context of poverty, malnutrition, and no clean water. Contextualism demands that science specify its conditions: under what circumstances, for whom, with what resources, in what cultural framework does this finding hold? It's the enemy of unwarranted generalization and the friend of actually useful knowledge.
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