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

536 Raymond Boudon
lation-spread and migration from 1945 to 1955, along with a proportion of
efficacious analytical and stochastic models, also offers us a whole collection of
researches associated notably with the names of Dodd and Zipf, which resolute-
ly held to the tradition of curve-fitting models. Later on, we shall iind Zipf,
working on shakily developed hypotheses, endeavouring to apply the Newtonian
law of attraction to migratory phenomena.
II. THE MAJOR TRENDS CHARACTERIZING THE APPLICATIONS OF MATHEMATICAL
METHODS AND MODELS IN THE HUMAN SCIENCES
Before going on to examine in greater detail the mathematical models and
methods utilized by the human and social sciences, it will be useful to recall the
main traits of the mathematical methodology as they seem to have been taking
shape in the last few years.
A. The quantitative increase in mathematical models
Here we have what is the most superficial but also the most striking feature of
the situation: all disciplines have now reached the point of heavy reliance on
mathematical instrumentation, and what was true of economics alone before
the second world war is now equally true of psychology, sociology, anthropol-
ogy and linguistics, not to mention demography.
Without enlarging on this, it is enough to point out that collected papers and
textbooks with ‘mathematical psychology’ or ‘mathematical sociology’ in their
titles are becoming more and more common. As regards psychology, we have
Developments in Mathematical Psychology, published in 1960 under the general
editorship of Luce, the three-volume Handbook of Mathematical Psychology,
published in 1963 under the editorship of Luce, Bush and Galanter, Contribu-
tions to Mathematical Psychology, published in 1964 with Gulliksen as editor.
In sociology, there is Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, published
in 1954 under the direction of Lazarsfeld, Coleman’s recent Introduction to
Mathematical Sociology, which came out in 1964, and Alker’s Mathematics and
Politics, which appeared in 1965. There is also Kemeny and Snell’s pluridisci-
plinary Mathematical Models in the Social Sciences, published in 1962. This
increase in textbooks and collected writings on mathematical methodology is
important, as it is indicative of the effort undertaken to provide an introduction
to this methodology at student level.
Another sign of the general trend to mathematicization is the proliferation of
new journals devoted specifically to methodological problems : there is, for
instance, the bulletin Mathtmatiques et sciences humaines, founded in 1963, the
Journal of Mathematical Psychology, the Journal of Multivariate Methods, and
Quality and Quantity, all founded quite lately, and the recently rechristened
British Journalof SfatisticaZandMathematical Psychology. In addition, journals
are being published like Behavioral Science which transcend the limits of the
individual disciplines, and study the problems attaching to the development of a