Sociocultural factors in the formation of scientific theories in physics: a historical and pedagogical analysis

Abstract

The article examines how sociocultural worldviews shape the formation, acceptance, and interpretation of scientific theories in physics, arguing that theoretical change cannot be reduced to a linear accumulation of facts. Science is approached not only as a system of empirical and theoretical knowledge, but also as a culturally conditioned practice embedded in historically variable expectations about what counts as a «good explanation» (e.g., visual-mechanistic plausibility, determinism, mathematical rigor, or aesthetic elegance). Drawing on a set of historical and contemporary case studies, the paper shows how dominant cultural intuitions and epistemic ideals influenced the selection of explanatory models, the assessment of anomalies, and the persistence of limited or erroneous frameworks. Classical examples (geocentrism, resistance to inertia, absolute space and time, the luminiferous ether, debates over determinism in early quantum theory, and the status of unobservable entities such as atoms) are interpreted as outcomes of shared assumptions about causality, order, and legitimacy of theoretical objects. Contemporary cases (LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves, the OPERA neutrino anomaly, and the BICEP2-to-Planck reassessment) illustrate that sociocultural influences continue to operate through institutional regimes of proof, collective verification protocols, statistical standards, and the media ecology of «breakthrough» expectations. In the educational dimension, the article substantiates the pedagogical value of «error histories» as a resource for cultivating critical thinking and Nature of Science understanding: learners are guided to separate data from interpretation, uncover hidden assumptions, analyse model limits, and reason about uncertainty, replication, and systematic error. Integrating such cases into physics instruction is proposed as a practical strategy for developing a scientific worldview in which knowledge remains justified yet open to revision.

Keywords: history of physics; sociocultural context; epistemic ideals; scientific error; Nature of Science; critical thinking; big science.