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.