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

General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 51 5
psychologists as to whether ‘universal‘ logic, meaning applicable to all individuals,
is superimposed on society or is only a product of it, the two opposing
contentions are in fact out of date, in that although logic is concerned with the
general co-ordination of action, that co-ordination is as much inter-individual
as intra-individual : and indeed, the operations occurring in cognitive exchanges
are found upon analysis to be the same as in individual constructions, so that
the former are as much a source of the latter as vice versa, the two remaining
inseparable by reason of their common biological roots.
On the other hand the linguists, while continuing their structuralist analyses
and in particular while attempting to formalize them as precisely as possible
in order to express the structural liaisons in a language based on algebraic and
sometimes even on physical methods, were far from ending up with a simple
logic, but discovered instead a series of structures sui generis and peculiar to
sign systems as such. This result is of two-fold interest, firstly because it shows
how a system of signs differs from a system of intellectual norms of truths, and
secondly because it brings up the problem of the relationship between the two.
And that relationship certainly exists, for while signs have their own laws, it is
also their function, within the active range of the subjects of the language, to
express meanings which are of a logical nature in varying degrees. It was in
this way that Hjelmslev, the linguist, came to propound the theory of a ‘sublogical’
level where connexions are formed between logical and linguistic coordinations.
It would seem very likely that analysis of that sub-logic would bring
us back io questions of co-ordination of action.
It must however be remembered, in particular, that linguistic structuralism,
which was essentially static with F. de Saussure, has become dynamic since
Z. Harris stressed the ‘creative’ aspect of language and since N. Chomsky discovered
his ‘transformational grammar’, which makes it possible to derive from
a ‘fixed kernel’, which he regards as innate, an indefinite number of terms in
accordance with precise rules of transformation (and in conformity with a
‘mono‘ide’ ordinal and associative structure). Now Chomsky attributes his
‘innate fixed nucleus’ to reason itself, which is the complete reverse of the
positivist position of the linguists (Bloomfield, etc.). One can, of course, without
in any way changing the purely linguistic aspects of Chomsky’s doctrine, query
his innateness of reason, since the sensori-motor intelligence which precedes
language is the end-product of a long structuration in which the hereditary factors
(which play a part everywhere) are far from being the only ones involved;
and H. Sinclair is currently trying to demonstrate that the constitution of the
‘monolde’ could be explained as the co-ordination of the sensori-motor patterns.
It is nonetheless true that, in the very sphere of linguistics, we have here a reversal
of the subordination of logical structures to language, thus opening up a
very broad field of experimental research to interdisciplinary collaboration
(psycholinguistics, etc.) in the study of questions which have hitherto mainly
been dealt with in a speculative fashion.
Furthermore, those logicians who, venturing beyond the problems of pure
formalization, look into the question of the relations between logical structures
and the activities of the subject, steer naturally in the direction of self-regulating