ABSTRACT
The issue about rule-following and explanation in the sciences of man comes down, I think, to a question about the kind of understanding which is required for an adequate explanatory account. Winch 1 has used a Wittgensteinian ‘rule-following’ approach in order to plead for a social science which takes the descriptions of the actors themselves seriously. And this has been thought by critics to lead to a hopeless impasse, where we might be expected to frame our explanatory accounts in the language of the society we are studying — in the case of a primitive society, who have nothing like our practice of social explanation, this would be a near impossibility.
