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

CHAPTER VI11
Mathematical models and methods
RAYMOND BOUDON
INTRODUCTION
It would be impossible to deal in a single chapter with trends in methods and
models used in the human sciences without first carefully defining the limits of
the subject.
This being a general chapter inserted into a scheme comprising a series of
chapters on single disciplines, there can be no question here of supplanting the
specialists. Chapters on trends in economics or psychology cannot dispense
with their own descriptions of the methods and models used in their disciplines.
That it has nevertheless been felt necessary to include a general chapter on
models and methods in the human sciences is because, in this domain, methodo-
logical intersection between disciplines are frequent. Thus it can be said that
elementary statistical methods are common to all the human sciences, while
others such as stochastic process theory, though not introduced to the same
degree in all disciplines and not used in the same way in, say, sociology and
psychology, are tending to attract the attention of all disciplines.
The problem was, however, to trace, apriori, a frame of reference which could
serve to distinguish the methods and models of general interest - or more pre-
cisely, the interdisciplinary methods and models -from the rest. It was felt that a
convenient dividing-line was provided by the distinction between the methods
and models which were respectively mathematical and non-mathematical.
Of course one should not attribute any absolute validity to this distinction.
Obviously, for instance, interview methodology, in which mathematics plays
little part, is interdisciplinary in a high degree since it is of interest to econo-
mists and demographers no less than to psychologists and sociologists. Converse-
ly, it would be easy tQ quote mathematicalmethods which are specific to partic-
ular disciplines. All that can be said, then, is that the mathematical methods
and models are more often interdisciplinary in character than non-mathematical.
That being so, it is important to note that the distinction is used essentially for
convenience, and that no absolute value should be ascribed to it.
Within these limits, the intention in this chapter is not - be it repeated - to