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

24 Jean Piaget
whether subjects capable of building them are also able to proceed further, and,
without seeing X and Z together, but knowing merely that X < Y and Y < Z,
to arrive at the completely new conclusion that X < Z. This is in fact what is
observed, although it was not at all apparent before.
In sociological fields, where experimentation is well-nigh impossible, the
historical or socio-genetic method is of fundamental importance in enabling the
observer to understand in what social currents he himself is being borne along.
When, on the other hand, he is involved both as judge and participant in con-
temporary crises or conflicts, a detailed analysis of the forms of social causality
nevertheless allows the observer to achieve a degree of decentering, limited as
it may be, by revealing that what he is inclined to consider as one-way causal
liaisons are always circular liaisons with reverse actions. In such a case, it is
impossible to pursue the analysis without coming to the conclusion that with
society, as with individuals, there are at least two levels of behaviour: actual
behaviour, and a state of awareness, not always matching that behaviour; in
other words, that there are substructures which are accessible to truly causal
research, and conceptual or ideological systems by which individuals in a socie-
ty justify and explain to themselves their social behaviour. All sociologists, in
fact, conduct such research and make such distinctions, and are able in conse-
quence to arrive at a state of decentered objectivity. But although the latter
makes it possible to dissociate the patterns conceived by the observer from the
facts which he observes, it will always be incomplete and subject to revision
since the patterns themselves remain subject to ideological influences. Some
sociologists conclude from this that scientific objectivity, as understood in the
natural sciences, is unattainable in sociology and that cognitive progress in this
field is only possible if research is associated with the commitment of the ob-
server to a specific praxis: but the very wish to take systematic account of this
constitutes in this respect a means of distinguishing between the subject and the
object of research, since even in physics, objectivity does not lie in alienation or
separation from a phenomenon, but rather in acting upon an object in such a way
as to provoke a phenomenon; what is ‘observable’ is never more than the product
of the impact of experiment upon reality. There is this difference, however: that
the phenomena observed in physics may be more easily measured and co-or-
dinated in logico-mathematical structures than social phenomena, which are far
more global. But if then a distinction is made in sociology between relations
which are measurable and what is sometimes called the ‘meta-sociological’
zone, because it can only be reached through theoretical speculation, there are
grounds forhoping that the shifting frontier between these areas may be gradually
pushed back.
Similar problems exist in economics, but here, since measurement is always
easier and mathematical or econometric theory far more advanced, the problem
is reduced to one of adjusting theoretical models to experimental patterns (in
the broadest sense of the term). This brings us to the next series of questions.