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

CHAPTER V
Demography
JEAN BOURGEOIS-PICHAT
I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
Demography 351
I. Trends in demographic research are affected by demographic development
itself. All human sciences have this feature in common. The human being is
caught up in the evolution of living species and the questions he asks himself,
the explanations he seeks, the actions he hopes to accomplish are not the same
depending on the evolutionary moment at which he happens to find himself.
Hence, in order to plot the course of future research, it is essential to examine
what changes have occurred throughout the ages in the characteristics of the
facts being studied - in this case the demographic facts.
2. Demographic facts are few in number and easy to define as soon as one asks
oneself how the life of the human species develops. In the study of matter, for
example, as research goes forward, new particles are progressively discovered
and works on physics, published within a €ew years of each other, present very
noticeable differences both in language and content. Nothing like that in
demography. A work such as Moheau’s, written nearly two centuries ago, on
demographic phenomena contains the same headings as the latest treatises. To
put it in another way, it can be said that in demography the real is immediately
apprehended in its totality. By real is meant here, following FourastiB’s conception,
‘that which is or can be made sensible, perceptible by the senses ...’.
In the sciences to do with matter, they are still at the stage of exploring the real,
and it seems as though this exploration were likely to last some time. Both the
infinitely great and the infinitely small seem to us to be limitless, which is why
we refer to them as ‘infinite’. Demography, and in general the sciences to do with
man, are in the realm of the. finite. The human being is the indivisible element
forming the essence of phenomena, and when you have said that he is born,
lives for a certain time during which he reproduces himself,’ travels about, and
finally dies, you have defined essentially what demography is about. Everything
in demography can be reduced to those essential happenings.
3. This invariability of the language might give the impression of a static type
of research. But, behind similar expressions highly different contents are to be