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

llaeplace of the sciences of man in the system of sciences 31
ory of games and operational methods (with linear and non-linear programmes),
cybernetic models, etc., are used either singly or together, with historical
analyses and analyses of institutional parameters where necessary. Then again
the application of all these methods to experimental data is constantly impeded
by the difficulty of delimiting the fields of observation, hence of finding the
opportune level of abstraction, for alongside general laws and laws which are
not general but apply to more than one economic aggregate, there are laws pecul-
iar to a single aggregate and problems of typology are continually arising accord-
ing to the scale of values adopted.
D. Linguistics provides an excellent example of a science in which experi-
mentation is almost excluded (except in experimental phonetics and psycho-
linguistics) and in which systematic analysis of observable data has proved suf-
ficient to permit the establishment of methods, the exactness of which could serve
as an example in other human sciences. Yet in this field also, as in psychology,
attempts to work out systems of units of measurement have been unsuccessful,
except in particular or so to speak localized cases when the units are selected
arbitrarily in a restricted context.
The search for regularities (linguists refer less and less to ‘laws’, not wishing
to conjure up an illusory similarity with the laws of physics) is based essentially
on the model of the logical functions, particularly that of implication. We
know that the expression ‘x implies y’ means that we observe y whenever x is
given, that y can be observed without x, that neither x nor y may be observable,
but that we never have x without y. In phonology, for example, we note that p
and b are both explosive phonemes, but that only the latter requires the use
of the vocal cords, and that this situation allows us to expect certain regularities
in their common functioning and their contrasts.
But starting from such regularities of logical and qualitative form we can
naturally follow two opposite though complementary paths : that of statistical
regularities in the external resultants of the functioning of language, and that
of analysis of the internal structures whose functioning is their expression. As
an example of the first tendency we might quote Zipf’s ‘law’, stating a more or
less regular relationship between species and genera in verbal classifications.
The probabilist nature of such statements leads us to the problem of their ex-
planation in terms of the objects designated, the subject of the language, or
both. On the diachronic level (and in its connexions with synchronic balance)
Martinet has attempted to explain phonological changes as a compromise be-
tween the need to express oneself and the tendency towards economy, of psy-
chological or probabilist origin. The r6le of entropy in communication theory is
known : Whatnough has quite recently used it for linguistic purposes.
All the research in structural linguistics, such as that of Chomsky, can be
quoted to illustrate the second tendency, one of the aims of which is to discover
regularities in the very transformations of possible rules, while still leaving open
the question of explanatory models, sought by Saumjan, etc., in the direction of
cybernetic structures.
In short we can see here how a human science, though lacking almost all
means of experimentation and all recourse to units of measurement of a general