Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

54 Jean Piaget
mathematics. But what the opponents of logical positivism have against it is
that on the contrary, it lacks this unity, for two reasons. The first is the pro-
found rift it creates between the facts of experience and the logico-mathematical
vocabulary, whereas in linking logico-mathematical structures with the actions
and operations of a subject we achieve greater unity in the relationship between
subject and object. The second reason is that in re-establishing the activities of
the subject, we attain a more constructive conception of the sciences, which
renders them more ‘open’ instead of enclosing them within the classical barriers
prevalent in all forms of positivism. Hence logical positivism, which is a source
of integration for some, appears to others as bound up with a ‘school‘ inhibiting
the desired integration.
Other movements that are not so obviously a school also strive to promote
the integration of scientific research. We have already referred to the interesting
movement begun by L. von Bertalanffy, called the ‘general theory of systems’,
which covers both the human and the natural sciences. Its object is to try to
discern the theoretical structures which are common to all attempts at synthesis,
whether in biological organicism or in the interpretations of overall data in
sociology and psychology. A movement of this kind is in fact allied to all the
trends towards the mathematization and especially the cybernetization of the
sciences that are concerned with mental or social organic life.
m. The twofold trend towards specialization and integration, which is the
result of movements of ideas and problems, but which, as we have seen, is
accompanied by various sociological stimuli, interferes in some ways with the
spontaneous division of work into basic research and tentative application. This
is a question of the greatest importance in relation to the present study, for the
reason why UNESCO undertook this survey of the main trends in the sciences of
man is obviously that they are useful to society and will be increasingly useful in
the future.
We thought it desirable, however, to deal with this problem in conjunction
with that of specialization and ‘schools’, not only because the dominant element
in the latter is often the desire to apply a theory but also because the frequent
isolation of practical workers from theoretical research may have the same dis-
advantages as those manifest in separation into schools - disadvantages which
are then all the more serious because they reduce the efficiency of practical work.
The relations between basic research and the many attempts at application
are profoundly different in those branches of study in which experimentation
in the strict sense is possible, and in those that deal with scales of phenom-
ena in which the statistical and probabilist analysis of observable factors rules
out- experimentation. In the latter case, application plays an important part
because it really acts as a substitute for experimentation. The classic example of
this second type is economics; when an economist is asked to organize a partic-
ular test, the specialist makes a number of forecasts based on theory; and the
ensuing events confirm or disprove them in the same way as experimentation
would, except that it is not always possible to isolate all the factors. Accordingly
this kind of application is bound up with basic research, and one could listza