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INTRODUCTION
The place of the sciences of man
in the system of sciences
JEAN PIAGET
This introductory chapter deals with the epistemological characteristics of the
sciences of man in terms of their objectivity, of the means of observing or
experimenting in them, and of the relationships they establish between theory
and experience. We shall examine their links with the natural sciences, with the
philosophies and with the principal current ideological and cultural trends.
But in the very first place it behoves us to explain exactly what we understand
by the ‘sciences of man’ and therefore to begin with an attempted classification.
I. Classification of social disciplines and ‘human sciences’
The distribution of disciplines among university faculties varies greatly from
one country to another and cannot be used as a basis for classification. We shall
confine ourselves here to pointing out that no distinction can be drawn between
the disciplines frequently referred to as the ‘social sciences’ and those known as
the ‘human sciences’, since social phenomena clearly depend upon all human
characteristics, including psycho-physiological processes, while reciprocally the
human sciences are all social, viewed from one angle or another. Such a dis-
tinction could only make sense (and that is the assumption on which it was
based) if it were possible to dissociate in man what pertains to the particular
society in which he lives from what is common to the whole of humanity. Many
thinkers, of course, remain favourable to such a distinction, tending to oppose
inborn traits to those acquired in a given physical or social environment, so
that ‘human nature’ is seen to rest upon the sum of hereditary characteristics.
But the idea is fast gaining ground that the innate consists mainly in abilities to
function, irrespective of inherited, ready-prepared structures1 (unlike the in-
stincts, most of which are hereditarily ‘programmed’): speech, for instance, is
acquired socially but is related to a brain centre (Broca’s convolution); if this
centre is damaged before the faculty of speech has been acquired, other cortical
areas not intended for that use wil take over its functions. Nothing therefore
prevents us from concluding that, contrary to the ideas prevailing in Rousseau’s