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

8 Jean Piaget
The problem can be stated in the following terms: Ever since the first thinkers
and teaching systems, there have always been discussions on psychology,
linguistics, sociology and economics. The Germania of Tacitus, for instance,
touches on cultural anthropology, while geographers in every age have had to
consider demographic problems. In general there have always been speculation
and commentary on the activities of man, and every philosophical system has
in some respect outlined or adumbrated the specialized disciplines with which we
are here concerned. But systematic or episodic speculation is one thing, while
the formation of a science as such, with a list of specifically defined problems
and its own sophisticated methods, is another. To put it more precisely, there
is all the difference between a dissertation and a process of observation and -
more important - of verification. The problem is then to analyse the factors
which have brought the present disciplines from the pre-scientific stage to the
state, or at least the ideal, of the nomothetic sciences. Five such factors can be
distinguished:
I. The first is the tendency towards comparison, which is far from being as
generalized and natural as might be supposed. The two most ready tendencies
of spontaneous thought, and even of speculation at its initial stages, are to
assume that one stands at the center of the world, both spiritual and material,
and to elevate one’s own rules or even habits into universal standards. The
construction of a science can in no way be founded upon such an initial
centering with further knowledge simply piled on by addition; the additive
process must also be systematic, and the prerequisite for objective systematiza-
tion is decentering away from the personal point of view which was dominant
at the start. The comparative approach brings about this decentering, while at
the same time broadening the law-seeking process to the point where the knowl-
edge becomes amenable to a variety of reference systems.
This comparative approach emerges particularly clearly in the history of
linguistics, which dates back two or three thousand years and witnessed many
attempts at systematization before the present age (cf. for example, the semantic
efforts made in the Middle Ages). Speculation on the meaning of words begins
at the teaching stage, and it is therefore legitimate to ask why the creation of
scientific linguistics has not come about faster or more purposefully. The answer
is clearly that in the early stages, speculation on words as such remained subject
to two forms of subjectivism: psychological, until many other terms of compari-
son emerge, and legalistic, i.e. leading people to believe that the science of
language is no more than grammar, and that the grammar of a language is a
more or less direct reflection of universal logic.
Teaching of the humanities did, of course, bring about some degree of de-
centering together with the notion of the historical descents of languages
(cf. 1.n above). In addition to his Grammaire de Port-Royal, Lancelot also
produced a work entitled Jardin des racines grecques, but the title alone of his
joint study with Arnauld, Grammaire gtntrale et raisonnte, provides sufficient
proof of the law-seeking centering just referred to.3 F. Bopp’s strictly comparative
approach in his Grammaire comparte des langues indo-europe‘ennes is the first