Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns major significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it stands in contrast to individualist theories of knowledge such as
empiricism and
rationalism, which neglect the role of
traditions. Historicism therefore tends to be
hermeneutical, because it places great importance on cautious, rigorous and contextualized interpretation of information, or
relativist, because it rejects notions of universal, fundamental and immutable interpretations.