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

The place of the sciences of man in the system of sciences
mining which disciplines may be classified as philosophical as opposed to
nomothetic among the sciences of man. This division of disciplines, however,
is precisely the problem we face, for the reasons already given and mainly
because of a historical process, initiated in the 19th century and gaining more
and more ground today: the splitting off of a number of branches, original-
ly philosophical, into autonomous and specialized disciplines. This was the
case of sociology and particularly of psychology, as we shall see shortly in
connexion with the history of the nomothetic sciences. But it was also the case
for logic; and today it largely holds good for scientific epistemology. For on the
one hand, modern logic has turned into a quasi-mathematical discipline, with
its own methods and a field of research independent of any metaphysical con-
siderations; and on the other hand, each of the natural and human sciences
tends to work out its own epistemology, which is more closely linked with that
of the other disciplines than it is concerned with metaphysical speculation.
But the most difficult problem raised in connexion with these two branches
of learning is that of determining their position in relation to the scientific
disciplines in general and to the nomothetic sciences of man in particular. On
the one hand, scientific learning is undoubtedly a human activity, and although
logic and scientific epistemology contribute essential and verifiable information
without necessarily involving philosophy in its traditional, academic sense, it
goes without saying that the nomothetic sciences of man are also closely con-
cerned with those two disciplines. In particular, a close relationship is to be
found between research on the psycho-genesis of intelligence and what has been
called genetic epistemology, i.e. the study of the process of learning as it de-
velops. But on the other hand logic, whose processes are essentially self-evident,
is closer to mathematics than to any other discipline, and scientific epistemology
has so far only won its laurels in the field of mathematics and physics. These
new disciplines should therefore be seen as one link among many others between
the sciences of man and the natural sciences or deductive disciplines, and this
together with other factors clearly shows how complex is the relationship
between the nomothetic sciences of man and the overall system of sciences.
Nevertheless and despite the many intermediate stages we have noted by way
of example, the division of the various sciences and disciplines into the four
categories mentioned above seems to correspond to the present state of knowl-
edge and gives the nomothetic sciences of man a natural and relatively independ-
ent status.
2. Major trends in the history of the nomothetic sciences
The purpose of this study is not to provide a historical background for the
nomothetic sciences of man, which can be found in many other works. However,
in order to bring out the main present trends in these sciences, some basic
facts are needed, and it may prove useful to recall their historical antecedents;
in otherwords, the past trends from which the present movements are descended,
either directly or by way of reaction.