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

786 Eric Trist
carry, without undue strain, the high level of waste and uncertainty associated
with complex research undertakings.*
18. The overall pattern of basic institutional forms which has been described
is a general model. These basic forms and their combinations appear in the
context of widely differing educational systems and in relation to scientific
‘infra-structures’ of widely differing efficacy. Nevertheless, development of the
social sciences requires certain underlying structural conditions and the recognition
of certain key relations. It is these which the model attempts to represent.
W. CHANGING THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE SYSTEM
Dysfunctional persistence of academic individualism
I. The total set of conditions postulated as ‘requisite’ for the most favourable
overall development of the social sciences are not yet in being anywhere in the
world. Considering the scale and rate of the rising demand, one may ask why
things are not further advanced. One factor to which the questionnaire material
and other sources consulted during the inquiry have drawn attention is the
belief that a serious mis-match exists between certain features of the Western
academic tradition and the needs of contemporary societies to develop a higher
level of social science capability. Yet it was this very tradition which enabled
universities in the wake of the Renaissance to establish the right, without inter-
ference from Church or State, to conduct free inquiry in all fields of scholarship.
Without the establishment of this right first the physical and then the biological
sciences could never have developed. Indeed, the foundation of the social
sciences themselves would never have been laid.
2. Three features require examination:
a. The privilege of free enquiry was granted to scholars and embodied in the
autonomy of their universities at a price - their dissociation from the larger
society. What might be safely investigated in the ‘ivory tower’ might be most
unsafe if it appeared on ‘main street’. Knowledge could remain free so long
as it remained ‘pure’.
b. Within the autonomous but segregated university the privilege of free en-
quiry was vested in the right of the individual scholar to pursue his subject
in his own way. His colleagues were expected to dispute with him - if
necessary, to disprove his findings - but not to prevent him from working
on what he should choose. To him solely belonged the privilege and the risk
of scientific choice. So, was it believed, would knowledge progress. So was
founded the tradition of academic individualism in relation to the pursuit of
pure knowledge.
c. The right to pursue one’s subject in one’s own way was not lightly to be
* Where much higher levels of staff are contemplated, the alternative should be con-
sidered of creating more than one establishment rather than a single organization so
big that innovative capability would be endangered by bureaucratization - unless in
special circumstances.