The third of four Relatively Adequate Hypotheses in World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence (1942), _Chapter X: Contexualism_, is considered to be the most significant philosophical contribution of Stephen C. Pepper.
_Contexualism_ can be compared to other Relatively Adequate Hypotheses in Root Metaphor, Categories, Theory of Truth.
> §1. _The contextualistic root metaphor_ > When we come to contextualism, we pass from an analytical into a synthetic type of theory. > * It is characteristic of the synthetic theories that their root metaphors cannot satisfactorily be denoted even to a first approximation by well-known common-sense concepts such as similarity, the artifact, or the machine. > * We are too likely to be misunderstood at the start, even though the basic synthetic concepts do originate in common sense or are, at least, discoverable there. > The best term out of common sense to suggest the point of origin of contextualism is probably the historic event. > * And this we shall accordingly call the root metaphor of this theory. > By historic event, however, the contextualist does not mean primarily a past event, one that is, so to speak, dead and has to be exhumed. > * He means the event alive in its present. > * What we ordinarily mean by history, he says, is an attempt to re-present events, to make them in some way alive again. > The real historic event, the event in its actuality, is when it is going on now, the dynamic dramatic active event. > * We may call it an "act," if we like, and if we take care of our use of the term. > * But it is not an act conceived as alone or cut off that we mean; it is an act in and with its setting, an act in its context. [p. 232, editorial paragraphing added]
First published (without the other three world hypotheses) by Pepper in 1934 as "[The Conceptual Framework of Tolman’s Purposive Behaviorism](https://doi.org/10.1037/h0075220)", there's a longer description of the influences forward in time as "[Causal texture, contextualism, contextural](https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/causal-texture-contextural-contextualism/)".