The art of thinking · Concepts, categories and definition
Family resemblance
Also known as: Family resemblance (Wittgenstein), Familienähnlichkeit
German: Familienähnlichkeit
In philosophy of language, family resemblance is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s term for concepts whose members are linked by a network of overlapping similarities rather than by one feature they all share; his example is the concept “game”.
- Thinking models
- Philosophy
- Linguistics
In one sentence
Wittgenstein’s family resemblance: members of a concept overlap in many features, without one feature that all of them share.
Example
Companies call very different documents “operating instructions” — machine manuals, workplace instructions, SOPs. They resemble each other, but no single feature defines the label; the glossary therefore defines each document type on its own.
How it applies
- The game example: Board games, card games, ball games and ring-a-ring-a-roses share no common feature, Wittgenstein argues — some are competitive, some involve luck, some skill — but they form a family through criss-crossing similarities.
- Against essentialism: The idea challenges the assumption that every general term must be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. Meaning is shown in how the word is used.
- Influence: Eleanor Rosch’s research on prototype theory in the 1970s gave the idea an empirical counterpart: category members differ in how typical they are.
- Technical documentation: Labels used across companies or departments often work by family resemblance. Terminology work then has two options: define a narrower technical term with a sharp boundary, or record the usage as a family of related meanings — and say which one a document means.
Family resemblance vs. vagueness
A family-resemblance concept can have perfectly clear cases and still no common feature; a vague concept has a common feature with blurry borderline cases. Both are reasons to define terms explicitly in technical text.
How to read this pool
Entries, context cards and transitional topics
The art of thinking explains ways of thinking — where a method comes from, what it asks of you and how it was adapted later. You meet four kinds of content here, each with its own job:
- Glossary entry
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