In short
Peter Winch (1926-1997) applied Wittgenstein's ideas about rule-following and forms of life to the social sciences. In The Idea of a Social Science (1958) and "Understanding a Primitive Society" (1964) he argued that human practices must be understood from within; critics accused him of relativism, a charge he rejected.
Peter Winch was the British philosopher who carried Wittgenstein into the social sciences and started one of the great arguments about relativism. Born in London in 1926, he studied at Oxford and taught at Swansea from 1951 to 1964, where Rush Rhees, one of Wittgenstein's literary executors, became his main influence. He later taught in London, at Birkbeck and King's College, and from 1985 at the University of Illinois.
What he took from Wittgenstein
Winch took two linked ideas: that meaningful behaviour is a matter of following rules, and that our rules hang together in forms of life. Agreement in language, Wittgenstein wrote, runs deeper than agreement in opinions.
Richtig und falsch ist, was Menschen sagen; und in der Sprache stimmen die Menschen überein. Dies ist keine Übereinstimmung der Meinungen, sondern der Lebensform.
It is what people say that is true or false; and in language people agree. That is not an agreement in opinions but in form of life.
Philosophical Investigations §241
What he did with it
In The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958) Winch argued that understanding a society is not like explaining the orbits of planets. To understand a vote, a purchase or a prayer you must grasp the rules that make it the act it is, much as you grasp a move in chess. Social science, on this view, is closer to philosophy than to physics.
His essay "Understanding a Primitive Society" (1964) turned this on E.E. Evans-Pritchard's classic study of witchcraft among the Azande. Evans-Pritchard had judged Azande beliefs false by the standards of science. Winch replied that we must first see what role the practice plays in Azande life, which may be closer to what ritual or prayer is for us than to a failed technology. Wittgenstein had made a similar point against Frazer in his Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough. Winch also translated Culture and Value (1980) and wrote on ethics and on Simone Weil.
Where the disagreement lies
Critics such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Ernest Gellner accused Winch of relativism: if standards of rationality are internal to each way of life, how can anyone criticise a practice from outside? Winch denied the charge and pointed to "limiting notions" that every human life must come to terms with, such as birth, death and sexual relations. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy places this debate in the wider philosophy of social science.
Scholars also ask whether Winch turned Wittgenstein's "form of life", which often seems to mean the human form of life as such, into a plurality of separate cultures, something Wittgenstein never quite said. And against Norman Malcolm, Winch argued that the Tractatus and the later work are more continuous than they look.
Frequently asked questions
Was Peter Winch a relativist?
He was often accused of it, but he rejected the label. He held that we must understand a practice on its own terms before judging it, and that shared human situations such as birth and death give us a common ground for understanding other cultures.
What is The Idea of a Social Science about?
It argues that social life consists of rule-governed, meaningful action, so the social sciences must work by understanding those rules from within rather than by copying the causal methods of the natural sciences.
Sources
wittgenstein.be, “Peter Winch”, https://wittgenstein.be/en/philosophers/peter-winch/ (2026-10-20)