Interpretive theory draws here on holistic theories of meaning. The idea of a hermeneutic circle entails meaning holism:Gadamer wrote, ‘as the single word belongs in the total context of the sentence, so the single text belongs in the total context of a writer’s work’ (2002: 291). Semiotics treats signs as getting content from their place within a system of signs (Peirce, 1998; Saussure, 1966). Analytic and post-analytic philosophers often argue that concepts refer only in webs of belief or language games (Quine and Ulian, 1970; Wittgenstein, 2001). Most philosophers now agree that we explain beliefs by reference to wider webs, not by reference to objective categories such as social class or institutional position, and not by construing meanings as ‘independent variables’ in naturalist forms of explanation.