ABSTRACT
This book will have been misunderstood if it is seen as yet another admonition to social workers to ‘be more precise’ in their use of terms. Indeed, if the argument of the book has been followed the reader will by now be considering what meaning can be attached to such general advice. ‘Precision’ only has meaning within a particular context, and statements can be judged ‘precise’ or otherwise only with a prior recognition of the kind of precision demanded by the language in which the context is given. Poetic statements, historical statements and many other kinds of proposition could all be described as precise, but there is no general criteria of precision they all meet. Similarly, when social workers are encouraged ‘to be critical’, they cannot see what is being required of them unless they are also given the set of ideas within which they could exercise a critical faculty.
