Abstract

This article examines the learning of a scientific procedure, and its connection to the greater scientific community through the notion of Wittgensteinian rules. The analysis reveals this connection by demonstrating that learning in interaction is largely grounded in rule-based community descriptions and judgments rather than any inner process. This same analysis also demonstrates that learning processes are particularly suited for such an analysis because rules and concomitant phenomena comprise a significant portion of any learning interaction. This analysis further reveals the elucidating merit of Wittgensteinian rules, their relation to community and the concept of practice, and promotes the efficacy of participant-generated rule-formulations as analytic descriptors