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Psychology 273
of physics theories and changes of ‘paradigms’ (or general conceptions linked
to certain fundamental intuitions such as Newtonian gravitation); now, Kuhn
repeatedly stresses the usefulness of conducting these historico-critical analyses
in conjunction with psychological research on perception and mental develop-
ment.
The other example is more personal, but no less significant. In classical
mechanics, it is known that speed is conceived as the relationship between
space travelled and time, while space and duration are two absolutes. In the
theory of relativity, time becomes relative to speed, the latter acquiring a sort of
absoluteness. On the other hand, there exists a known circular relationship
between time and speed, the latter having time as its referent and durations
being measured only by speeds. Einstein therefore suggested, long ago, that
the formation of these two concepts be studied from the psychological angle (on
perceptive and notional grounds) in order to find out whether there was an
intuition of speed independent of duration. Not only have we found this in-
tuition in children, in the form of ordinal intuition of overtaking (which presup-
poses temporal order and spatial order, but no measure of time or distance
covered), but again have been able to observe that the construction of temporal
notions and perceptions sooner or later has speed as a referent. Furthermore, a
French physicist and a mathematician, Abelk and Malvaux, have given an
account of the theories of relativity wherein they seek to overcome the circular
relationship of time and speed. Resorting to the psychogenesis of these notions,
they take up anew our results on speed-overtaking and, by introducing a counter,
a logarithmic law and an Abelian group, they return to the theorem of the
composition of speeds without recourse to circularity. Of course, this is no con-
tribution of psychology to the physicist’s technique, but to his epistemology;
nevertheless, it is significant.
IV. Each of the relationships mentioned under headings I-m
between psychology
and the exact sciences (logic and mathematics) and the natural sciences (physics)
is of an epistemological nature, whereas relationships between psychology and
biology, sociology and the other sciences of man consists, in addition, of
technical exchanges. This is no mere chance, and by referring to the hypothesis
of a circular or spiral system of sciences (cf. the ‘Introduction’, section 6), it wil
be understood that the subject constitutes at one and the same time an object of
studies presupposing the collaboration of the whole range of sciences, and the
source of the knowledge required for the development of those sciences. From
this viewpoint, collaboration between psychology and bordering disciplines
may therefore consist of technical exchanges, whereas its relationships with the
basic formal or concrete disciplines can only be epistemological or relative to
the formation and foundation of knowledge.
But is not epistemology strictly speaking of a philosophic nature, which, for
certain authors, means suprascientific? Without going into this problem, it
will suffice to note I) that all advanced sciences nowadays deal with their own
epistemology without going through schools of philosophy, and 2) that every
epistemology, whatever it may be, always has psychology as a referent in certain