ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with possibilities of thought that are constrained or expedited by particular forms of culture and language use. Critical thinking arose out of awareness of the incommensurability between different belief and value systems. Growth of a sense of history and social change, and thus of the relativity's of human knowledge, were what stimulated the search for general principles to enable the reasoner to transcend this welter of perceived inconsistency. The 'unfinished' internal semanticity in language, thought and behaviour encompasses such familiar cases as discussion between peers and the interpretation by adults of the 'world of the child.' Peter Winch's philosophical sociology traces the hermeneutic implications of the concept of forms of life, directing attention to reciprocates between observer and observed involved in attempts to elucidate the meaning of unfamiliar social practices; the dialogic process of achieving verstehen.
