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

The organization and financing of research 787
granted - only to those who could prove themselves in the eyes of established
scholars. Hence thcrite de passage’ of the doctorate, the individual character
of the thesis being sacrosanct, even though the theme required professorial
approval. So was the tradition of academic individualism maintained through
a sanction internal to the scientific community.
3. So long as the advancement of knowledge depended on the separation of
pure science from its possible applications and on the personal contributions of
a relatively small number of outstanding scholars, the tradition of academic
individualism represented an adaptive value on which to found the organization
of science. This phase - to use a term of Sartre’s - has now been ‘depassed‘. New
values must be sought which have yet to be identified.
4. This situation is more extensively recognized in the natural than in the
social sciences. In the former the inter-penetration of science and technology
has long been taken for granted, as has the need for group as well as individual
effort, and for large-scale as well as small-scale research, continued over long
time periods. In the social sciences the tradition of academic individualism
dies hard.
5. Its dysfunctional effects may be demonstrated in those Western European
countries where it has remained least changed during the post-war period :
a. The reluctance of universities to recognize any form of research other than
the fundamental has forced applied research, whether generically or con-
cretely focused, to seek expression in outside organizations.
b. Because the tradition of academic individualism has persisted in these bodies
also, they have, while becoming exceedingly numerous, tended to remain
exceedingly small. The result has been a dispersion of effort.
c. Meanwhile, the pressure of expanding student populations on small depart-
mental staffs has created teaching overloads which have restricted the amount
of fundamental research carried out in the universities.
d. Traumatic career choices have confronted younger social scientists. To stay
in the university meant to do little else but teach. To depart meant to do
little else but short-term research in organizations too small and unstable
to provide career continuity.
The inappropriate persistence of this pattern has accounted in substantial
measure for a lack of originality in post-war social science in many countries -
despite an increase in the quantity of activity. In contrast is the interwar
period when the tradition of academic individualism was still functional and
when originality was of a high order.
The nature of the required changes
6. What is the nature of the changes required? They would seem to involve a
fundamental shift :
a. The right of the individual scholar freely to pursue what he elects to pursue
wil remain, wherever access to the social field is not a critical issue. It can
remain also so long as the complexity and scale of the problem are such that
they can be encompassed by a single mind. An increasing number of the key
problems, however, in many of the areas with which the social sciences are