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

General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 509
But this reference to biology, which stresses the very general nature of the
problem of relations between structural diachrony and functional synchrony,
leads us to enquire into the particular status of concepts of function, utility or
values in relation to structural development and, finally, to reflect once more on
the reasons why it is difficult to treat history as a nomothetic discipline.
In the field of biology an organ can change its function without that change
resulting from the previous history of the structure concerned: to borrow a
classical example, the fact that the swim-bladder of the Dipneusti now serves as
their lung is not due to the general historical factors which ensured the evolution
of the Invertebrates into Fishes, but results from unforeseeable changes in the
environment. It is therefore doubtful whether it wil ever be possible to create a
deductive model of the history of life which would supply the details of all
known transformations, whereas we may be permitted to hope for an ‘organicist’
model (see section IO) which would account both for the general characteristics
peculiar to living structures and for the major functions common to all
or almost all organisms, such as assimilation, respiration (except for viruses),
etc. But these ‘functional invariables’ are of variable content and are thus
differentiated in the course of their history, and that history, like all genuine
history, constitutes an inextricable mixture of deducible and contingent structurations
: whereas reactions to the contingent consist in regulations or rebalancings
which are intelligible after the event, the sequence of their succession is
nevertheless unforeseeable, and this makes the present functions of a sub-structure
relatively independent of its previous development.
The same applies in part to the sphere of human history, despite the corrections
implied in man’s twofold specificity, of having created a culture which
incessantly enriches itself because it is socially transmitted and of having a
reflexive intelligence which makes it possible to multiply rational behaviours
(despite their obvious limits in the common consciousness). It follows that although
certain historians would like to give nomothetic status to their discipline
by means of interdisciplinary fusion of the history of science and technology,
of economic, cultural and political history and of diachronic sociology, etc.,
the laws of development or functioning that could be derived therefrom might
nevertheless differ considerably, depending on the types of structure envisaged
and, consequently, on the varieties of possible relations between structures on
the one hand and of functions, utility or values on the other.
Were we to assume that we could adopt as one methodological ideal that of
genetic structuralism, which indeed seems to be common to many disciplines,
the fact nevertheless remains that the distinction between structures capable of
‘closure’ and structures as yet incomplete or destined to remain open for all time
imposes a series of differentiations which express themselves in particular in
the need to recognize several varieties of values depending on whether they are
normative or non-normative, etc. (sections IO and I I). C. Nowinski, an expert
in Marxist methodology, has pointed out, for instance, that ‘the kinship of
methods as between genetic psychology and Marx’s theory is sometimes surprising.
There remains, however, an important difference. For Piaget the notion
of balance as the central mechanism and necessary mainspring of the process of