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

14 Jean Piaget
in its own deductive and algebraic field, immediately found its own methods
and autonomy - a process simplified by the fact that the uninitiated found it
somewhat difficult to follow. In other cases, declarations of independence have
been more explosive, e.g. in psychology, in which everyone believes himself
competent, with the result that specialized research work was not at first rec-
ognized as valid and] authoritative. Whatever the occasion, the process is set
in motion by similar principles of specialization arising from the need for
agreement based on the use of common and converging methods.
V. The fifth decisive factor in the formation of the nomothetic sciences of man
therefore relates to the choice of such methods. At a later stage (section 4) we
shall consider their specific characteristics, but what should be emphasized
now, in the context of these methods’ historical origins, is their general and
decisive r61e as instruments of verification. A science can only begin to function
when there is an adequate definition of the problems circumscribing a research
field in which a meeting of minds can be achieved, and we have just seen that
this was how the sciences which had to break away from metaphysics came
into being. But what is the nature of this meeting of minds, and by what criterion
did the champions of an emergent science conclude that they had succeeded in
establishing a consensus different in kind from those which unite the members
of a school of philosophy or of a political or artistic group? The criterion is by
no means static, since there can be much more discussion and disagreement
among experimenters concerned with the same question than among the disci-
ples of the founder of a speculative doctrine. The rallying point of the sciences
with which we are concerned, during their formative period, was a common
desire for verification, the accuracy of which increased in relation to the degree
of mutual checks and even criticisms.
Speculation and intuition are the only methods of approach in subjects in-
volving basic value judgements and commitments. The essence of any attempt
to isolate a problem in order to detach it from subjective or emotional con-
victions is the search for a common ground of verification - experimental
verification in the broad sense in cases of fact, or numerical and formal verifica-
tion in deductive disciplines such as logic. Naturally, all the great philosophical
systems, side by side with their speculative elements, abound in precise observa-
tions or factual data; more important still, the great philosophers of The Past
have almost all been innovators in the natural or human sciences. Nevertheless
the scientific phase of research begins when, after separating what is verifiable
from what is speculative or intuitive, the research worker fashions special
methods, adapted to his problem and at one and the same time methods of
approach and of verification.
This factor, together with its forerunners, seems to us to account for the his-
torical developments which have marked the birth and growth of the nomothetic
sciences of man.