This article presents and analyses a social-practice contextualist
version of meaning holism, whose main root lies in American pragmatism.
Proposing that beliefs depend on systems of language-use in social
practices, which involve communities of people and worldly objects, such
meaning holism effectively breaks down the Enlightenment tradition’s
philosophical subject–object dualism (and scepticism). It also opens the
human mind up for empirical research – in a ‘sociologizing’,
‘anthropologizing’ and ‘historicizing’ vein. The article discusses the
implications of this approach for the human sciences, for instance
certain parallel developments in anthropology and archaeology.