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

General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 507
such as the one we have just examined make it possible to carry out a logical
and causal analysis of the interactions involved, and there is nothing to prevent
this analysis from being extended to the consideration of more complex transfers
or of new feedbacks. In particular it is possible to add to the model we have
shown, which already relates to regulations in the general sense of the term, a
regulatory feedback in the limited economic sense (policy of stabilization, which
here would in fact be a policy of growth): it would be enough to introduce a
new variable G(t), such that Y(t) + G(t) + Y(t), making it possible to
modify the rate of growth p by the nature of the transfer achieved33 (the model
would of course have to be expanded to take account of delayed variations,
which play an essential motivating rBIe in economic regulations).34
The general significance of such models is considerable; in fact they represent
one of the most important common mechanisms in the field of values and even
in that of the build-up of structures.35
As for values, that is to say, as we have seen ( section IO), the rale of the affective
life in general, it is clear that the loops connecting production with consumption
or investment recur in the most widely different situations: all production,
i.e. all constructive action, is reinforced or held back by its own results, i.e.
by the consumer actions to which it gives rise; on the other hand it leads to new
affective ‘investments’ which reinforce the initial action or supplement it with
others. Thus we have here a very general mechanism from which the economic
models we have just examined differ only by their specific social characteristics
and by the remarkable degree of quantification to which they lend themselves.
As to the build-up of structures, this is closely linked to what we have just
called production in the general sense of constructive actions. From this it follows
that in all fields a structure which finally acquires a well-regulated or logicomathematical
nature (e.g. a ‘group’ structure) starts with a phase of simple adjustment,
i.e. of construction by trial and error whose corrections are effected
by means of feedbacks analogous to those described. Later, once the structure
has been sufficiently balanced, the play of reversible operations takes the
place of the initial regulations (as we have seen in section 5) : correction as a function
of the results alone is then replaced by an anticipatory pre-correction of
the actions in progress, and the loop system thus arrives at a system of direct and
reverse operations whose regulation is now identical with its constructive activity
(the values initially involved being thereby promoted to the rank of normative
values).
14. Synchronic and diachronic problems in the sphere of functions and values
We have seen (in section 9) that the normative structure achieves a condition of
equilibrium (with, or course, variable degrees of stability depending on the
relations between form and content: see section 8) as a function of a process of
development which itself constitutes at all stages a balancing in the sense of a
process of self-regulation. This self-regulation is to varying degrees inherent in
the actual production of the structure in that there are no constructive mecha-