In this essay the author explores the roots of the concept of in the global changes since 1945, in the fields of economy, education, philosophy. The author makes a great distinction in order to clean the educational concept of competence from other meanings, political or economical. A crucial classification is introduced to differentiate scientific contexts and existential context (personal, familiar, local, regional, global). The concept of competence in social sciences must be adequate to the complexity of these sciences, and also to his characteristics, which are summarized with some examples taken from Clifford Geertz.