Norm

The philosopher Wittgenstein was radically critical of this approach and discussed its failure to ‘define’ abstract concepts such as ‘game’ or ‘number’ (1953, ƒ66-67). As an alternative, he coined the notion of ‘family resemblance’ between the members of a class. This notion obviated the need to determine a property common to all games, for example, that would justify their being called ‘games’. Wittgenstein argued (1958,~18) that “Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods, and this is surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses”. This evolutionary view of language can be applied to the evolvement of concepts, and contrasts with a strict definition based on categorizing the content of a concept via the elusive common property of its members. Wittgenstein argued that this is how we play ‘language games’, and that language games adhere to ‘forms of life’.