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

General problems of interdisciplinary research and common mechanisms 525
On the other hand, a genuine ‘hybridization’, with fruitful re-combinations,
is that of psycholinguistics, for it enriches both psychology - obviously - and
linguistics itself, inasmuch as only this new branch of science leads to systematic
studies of the individual’s use of language, which, on the contrary, is institutionalized.
Doubtless much, too, may be expected from ‘sociolinguistics’, in which
Greenberg and others have undertaken studies combining linguistics and sociology.
Social psychology is as useful to sociology as to psychology, on which it
confers a new dimension ; and while social psychologists sometimes display
that kind of imperialism that is the mark of a science in its youth, it is also a sign
of independence and an augury of syntheses to come.
Ethology, or zoopsychology, is today undertaken by professional zoologists
as much as - indeed, more than - by psychologists, and it unquestionably enriches
biology (especially with regard to the theory of selection, by showing that
the animal chooses and fashions his environment as much as it is conditioned
by the latter), while at the same time it makes a uniquecontribution to psychology,
in particular in the analysis of the cognitive €unctions (instinct, learning
and intelligence).
The author must be forgiven for laying equal stress on the experiment undertaken
in genetic epistemology in the last ten years or so, or the study of the formation
and building up of knowledge. In the study of the development of logical,
mathematical, kinematical and other structures, the international centre set
up for this purpose in Geneva has always encouraged psychologists to collaborate
with logicians, mathematicians, cyberneticians, physicists and so on. Now,
genetic epistemology is on the one hand a new branch of science, which results
from the hybridization of epistemology (especially in its ‘historico-critical’ methods)
and geneticpsychology. And it serves both at once, for, as the logician S. Papert
has said, in order to understand man we must know something of epistemology,
and in order to understand epistemology we must have a knowledge of man.
In a sense, therefore, the situation of these new and essentially interdisciplinary
branches of science confirms what was said (in section I) about situations
in which the link between a ‘higher’ (in the sense of ‘more complex’) and
a ‘lower’ field results neither in a reduction of the first to the second nor in
greater heterogeneity of the first, but in mutual assimilation such that the second
explains the first, but does so by enriching itself with properties not previously
perceived, which afford the necessary link. In the case of the human sciences, in
which there can be no question of growing complexity or of declining generality,
because all aspects are to be found everywhere, and because delimitation of the
different fields is a process of abstraction rather than a question of hierarchy,
mutual assimilation is still more necessary and there is no danger of vitiating the
specificity of phenomena. The difficulties, however, are considerable. But, apart
from the difference between various forms of university training, which is undoubtedly
the main obstacle to be overcome, the common logico-mathematical
tcchniques that are gradually coming into general use are at once the best indication
of the convergence that is called for and the best means of effecting a junction.