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

26 Jean Piaget
conclusion adopted in relativist mechanics, which also permitted a satisfactory
approximation to the perihelion of Mercury.
Hence we see that the concordance between calculation and measurement
does in fact lead to the equivalent of experiment where the organization of the
measurements can be based upon reasonable forecasts, i.e. in situations where
observation makes it possible to choose between precise alternative paths. But
there is a further indirect manner in which experimentation can always take
place: from a general theory concerning phenomena the scale of which makes
the dissociation of factors impossible, one may sometimes draw conclusions
on a scale which lends itself to experimental action. In such cases control
experiments are possible: as, for example, when Newtonian mechanics were
applied in the laboratory (in the measurement of weight, etc.), or when the
Theory of Relativity gave rise to a number of equally verifiable conclusions
(experiments by Ch. E. Guye and Lavanchy concerning the relationship between
mass and energy, etc.).
We may note here and now that successes of this type in astronomy, despite
the impossibility of conducting large-scale experiments, give rise to hope in the
case of such disciplines as econometrics or even sociology, provided measure-
ments are precise enough to permit adequate comparison with theoretical
patterns. But a further major difficulty to be added to that of measurement
arises out of the fact that social phenomena all depend to a greater of less
extent on the unfolding of history, and that such diachronic processes do not
lend themselves either to experimentation or even to the elaboration of properly
deductive patterns. Here again, however, the situation is not peculiar to the
human sciences; geology, for example, lends itself neither to experimentation
nor to deduction in the strict sense.
In geology nevertheless, once the strata providing the necessary chronological
framework have been established (on the basis of stratigraphy supported by
mineralogical and paleontological data), it is possible to elaborate what are,
in fact, causal series, such as those embodied in the general tectonic theories of
Termier concerning overthrust, of Wegener concerning the movement of con-
tinents and of Argand concerning the formation of Alpine chains through
successive earth-movements. Such geological laws are based on certain histori-
cally regular processes; but they also conform to certain structural laws. For
example, the mathematician Wavre drew up equations concerning the effects of
the rotation of more or less fluid masses, in a structural analysis which, inlev
alia, provided support for Wegener’s formulations.
As regards the natural sciences in the context of historical processes which can
no longer be challenged, but on which some light can still be shed by modem
experimentation - as, for example, when the theory of the evolution of organiz-
ed beings is set against genetics - it goes without saying that they are, in prin-
ciple, better placed, because they draw at one and the same time on data provid-
ed by experiments, however limited, and on mathematical patterns (great
services have already been rendered in genetics by the elaboration of mathemat-
ical models of processes of selection and reassembly). Yet the complexity of
the problems involved and the impossibility of large-scale experimentation