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

Preface xv
development, fruitfulness and capacity for renewal and creation in fact depend.
While it is true that research is less and less conceivable without a high degree
of specialization, close interdisciplinary co-operation is the natural and neces-
sary counterpart of this development. Co-operation of this kind is necessitated
firstly by the changes that are taking place at the present time in the intellectual
conditions of scientific work: everything is combining to break up the compart-
mentalization inherited from a bygone age of knowledge; within each disci-
pline recourse must be had to the hypotheses, methods, patterns of intellection
and findings of related disciplines, and even of disciplines that only yesterday
were considered to be the most remote and least germane. Yet still, all too often
this need is met only in response to the chance requirements of research or as
opportunities for encounter may occur, without a sufficiently broad over-all view,
without sufficient continuity, without real mutual openmindedness on the part
of the practitioners of the various methods, and above all, without sufficient elab-
oration and clarification of the foundations on which a combination of these
methods may be based. One of the most significant results that should naturally
ensue from a study such as this, is the preparation of a chart - admittedly provi-
sional and subject to constant revision - of the strong points and weak points of
interdisciplinary co-operation and of their substratum, and the identification of
priority areas to which research scientists should direct their thinking and insti-
tutions their activities.
But that is not all; the evolution that has begun in our time in the epistemolog-
ical style of research cannot be dissociated from the evolution of human situa-
tions and problems with which that research is concerned. The multi-dimensional
character of the human phenomenon has doubtless always existed; but it has not
always so imperatively compelled recognition by science. If the study of man is
taking on a new look, this is mainly because it forms an integral part of a world
in the throes of change, which it is endeavouring to provide with the elements of
an authentic learning, the means of arriving at an informed awareness and the
bases for well-considered choices. It is in its application to recently still unknown
or unnoticedaspectsof the existenceof man as an individual, of the life of human
communities, of the future development of cultures, that research discloses its
most vital and fruitful trends.
Science and technology have created entirely new condititions of life, opened
up unheard-of possibilities, given rise to unprecedented problems. The horizon
of human experience has thus been appreciably broadened. At the same time,
the development of media of expression and communication has brought
about a veritable change of scale in our apprehension of all that exists around
us. By bringing us close in time and space to events whenever and wherever they
occur, it gives individual, social and cultural life a new dimension which is
tending to equal that of the world as it now is, while at the same time threaten-
ing the quality of precious personal consciousness. More generally, the ad-
vances of knowledge transcend the powers of the individual mind, and for the
elaboration of knowledge as well as for the continuing task of its reunification
the human intellect needs to be supported by machines of its own invention;
science, which is causing an upheaval in the current conception of the universe