Commentary: What should Idiographic Language be like?

In this commentary, I analyze Valsiner and Salvatore’s argument about the need to construct a language for idiographic science. I present the original version of the concepts nomothetic and idiographic by Wilhelm Windelband and later misunderstandings about them. I argue that these misunderstandings are partially motivated by inconsistencies by Windelband himself. In particular, he defined “idiographic knowledge” as logical singular propositions; and, at the same time he suggested that it is knowledge by intuition. Furthermore, Windelband’s original definition of idiographic knowledge is paradoxically written in nomothetic language. From this analysis, I evaluate the adequacy of Valsiner and Salvatore’s two claims for an idiographic language: to incorporate abductive inference and to use field-like signs instead of point-like signs. In the first case, we have a new way to better approach intuition. In the second case, systems theory language allows a more accurate description of psychological phenomena. Nonetheless, I argue for the primacy of ordinary language over systems-theory language.