Insights
We begin with the emergence of the philosophy of the social sciences as an arena of thought
and as a set of social institutions. The two characterizations overlap but are not congruent.
Academic disciplines are social institutions. My view is that institutions are all those social
entities that organize action: they link acting individuals into social structures. There are various
kinds of institutions. Hegelians and Marxists emphasize universal institutions such as the family,
rituals, governance, economy, and the military.
These are mostly institutions that just grew. Perhaps in some imaginary beginning of time, they
spontaneously appeared. In their present incarnations, however, they are very much the product
of conscious attempts to mold and plan them. We have family law, established and
disestablished churches, constitutions, and laws, including those governing the economy and the
military. Institutions deriving from statute, like joint-stock companies, are formal by contrast with
informal ones such as friendships.
There are some institutions that come in both informal and formal variants, as well as in mixed
ones. Consider the fact that the stock exchange and the black market are both market
institutions, one formal, one not. Consider further that there are many features of the work of the
stock exchange that rely on informal, non-codifiable agreements, not least the language used for
communication. To be precise, mixtures are the norm . . . From constitutions at the top to bylaws near the bottom, we are always adding to or tinkering with earlier institutions; the grown and
the designed are intertwined.
It is usual in social thought to treat culture and tradition as different from, although alongside,
institutions. The view taken here is different. Culture and tradition are subsets of institutions
analytically isolated for explanatory or expository purposes. Some social scientists have taken all
institutions, even purely local ones, to be entities that satisfy basic human needs – under local
conditions . . . Others differed and declared any structure of reciprocal roles and norms an
institution. Most of these differences are differences of emphasis rather than disagreements. Let
us straddle all these versions and present institutions very generally . . . as structures that serve
to coordinate the actions of individuals. . . . Institutions themselves then have no aims or purpose
other than those given to them by actors or used by actors to explain them . . .
Language is the formative institution for social life and for science . . . Both formal and informal
language is involved, naturally grown or designed. (Language is all of these to varying degrees.)
Languages are paradigms of institutions or, from another perspective, nested sets of institutions.
Syntax, semantics, lexicon, and alphabet/character-set are all institutions within the larger
institutional framework of a written language. Natural languages are typical examples of what
Ferguson called ‘the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design’[;]
reformed natural languages and artificial languages introduce design into their modifications or
refinements of natural language. Above all, languages are paradigms of institutional tools that
function to coordinate.
