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

748 Eric Trist
6. The academies are organized on three principles which in Eastern Europe
apply to scientific activities in general:
a. the planned character of the work of scientific research and development;
b. the collective character both of research activity and of the appraisal of its
progress ;
c. the active participation of the largest possible number of those concerned -
both the research workers themselves and those in other relevant organizations
- in the direction of projects.86
What these principles entail will become clearer from examples of projects under
way in Poland and Czechoslovakia. To reach consensus on what is to be done
in face of the many options to be considered and the many opinions likely to be
held pose formidable problems in scientific decision-making. They are more
difficult in the social sciences with their relatively open situation than in the
natural sciences. The individualistic traditions of Western Europe and North
America create one set of dilemmas, the collectivistic traditions of the socialist
countries of Eastern Europe another. Their resolution would seem to require
something of each and something that awaits still to be found, if the largescale
but innovative projects on which the development of the social sciences
depends are to be conceived and carried through.
7. In all the academies the social sciences and the humanities are included
along with the biological and physical sciences. The unity of the sciences is a
postulate of an underlying philosophy which also sees no meaning in separating
the historical disciplines (the humanities) from the ‘nomothetic’ sciences of
man (the social sciences). Nevertheless organizational categories are similar to
traditional faculties of Western European universities. In the USSR for the humanities
there are departments of history and of literature and lang~age.~’ For
the social sciences there is a composite department of philosophy and law which
includes political science and sociology - all seen as related. There is a separate
department of economics.*
8. In Czechoslovakia the social sciences have separate collegia for philosophy
(which includes sociology); history; economics; the sciences of state and law,
theory of arts; linguistics. Pedagogics and psychology are administered by a
special commission dependent on both the Academy and the Ministry of
Education. In Poland all the social sciences and humanities are grouped in one
department, but this has seventeen ‘scientific committees’ which include nonacademicians.78
In addition to committees with a discipline-orientation, such as
those for demography, or psychology and pedagogy, others have a problemorientation,
such as the Committee for Research on Contemporary Culture.
This has several commissions promoting research on mass culture, Polish
settlements abroad, and the ‘human aspects’ of town planning and architecture.
Another committee is that for research on the social problems of People’s
Poland, which has sponsored long-range studies of the real income of different
class groups and change in social stratification. The Economics Committee
cooperates with the Economic Commission of the State Committee for Science
and Technology and with the Planning Commission.
* These departments are now grouped in the Section of the Sciences of Society.