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

280 Jean Piaget
the link with biology remains all-important). A solution sometimes advocated
is that of inter-faculty institutes, whereby ties are maintained with science, social
science, medicine and arts, but this would be a satisfactory solution only if such
institutes were able to award degrees and doctorates in addition to special di-
plomas, and if they could enjoy the same autonomy as the faculties.
NOTES
I. No one could say, for instance, that science itself is ‘never’ concerned with the
problem of freedom. All that can be said is that it is not concerned with it at
present, though there are some indications that the position might change. We know, for example, that in logic and mathematics a theory of a given richness (as
in elementary arithmetic) is not sufficient to show its own non-contradiction:
employing only its own resources or lesser resources (logic), it cannot avoid meeting
unresolvable propositions that only richer resources (transfinite arithmetic) can
elucidate, but without being able to do so on their own account. This famous
theorem, which we owe to Goedel, has recently been applied to machines simulating
the processes of thought, and it was shown that a machine of which all the elements
were clearly determined, could not in a given state at time T entirely foresee
its state at time T+ I (do do this, it must be subordinated to a machine of a higher
order, in turn not entirely determined itself). The analogy of such problems with
those of contingency and the degree of determinism is immediately discernible.
2. G. Miller humourously wrote that he regarded himself as a ‘subjective behaviourst’.
3. E. NAGEL, in B. B. WOLFMAN and E. NAGEL (eds.), Scientific Psychology, New
York, Basic Books, 1965, pp. 26-27.
4. R. CARNAP, in Minnesota Studies on the Philosophy of Sciences, 1956.
5. R. VON MISES, Positivism, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951, p. 236.
6. N. CHOMSKY. in Language 35, 1959, pp. 26-58.
7. We have found, for instance, a law of maximum for certain illusions, which are
strongest when the time of exposure is approximately from I to z/Ioths of a second.
8. It should be noted in particular that some writers (Burt, Cohen, etc.) doubt whether
a causal explanation can be given for all cognitive processes. But the important
boundary is that between seeking for an explanation and refusal to explain. Such
refusal may be based either on positivist reasons, or on the distinction between
‘explaining’ and ‘understanding). but such a distinction is to some extent artificial,
since the two are no doubt inseparable). In this sense, it can be considered that any
explanation implies causality in some form or another, with the two terms of explanation
and causality thus in principle overlapping.
9. See the ‘Introduction’, section 7, heading 11.
IO. And, of course, there remains the problem of not exclusively cognitive matters
(as, for example, explaining how a poem takes shape). It is contemporary structuralism
that seeks to find in the most affective regions (even in psychoanalysis) ‘structures’
in the linguistic sense, etc., which then themselves imply a certain degree of
possible logicization (and we know that ‘logios’ can be differentiated in an infinite
number of ways).
11. These relations, be it noted, do not just involve exploration in the sphere of neurophysiology,
but today even touch on human genetics.
12. K. LORENZ, ‘Uber die Entstehung von Mannigfaltigkeit’, Die Naturwissenschuften
52, 19659 PP. 319-329.
13. For an excellent summing of current knowledge, see the chapter by Joseph Nuttin
on motivation and the one by Paul Fraisse on the emotions in FRAISE and PIAGET,
Trait6 de psychologie expirimentale, 2nd ed., Paris, PUF, 1963, Vol. V. pp. 1-82.
14. The term ‘law’, which has been elaborated on several times recently, is used by