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

788 Eric Trist
becoming concerned raise critical issues both of access and of pluralistic
contribution.
b. This means that the tradition of academic individualism can no longer play
the role of ‘the leading part’* in a philosophy of the social sciences. It cannot
for this reason provide the basic criterion on which the organizations neces-
sary for their development can be built. It can play the role only of a sub-
ordinate part.
To accept this is a difficult shift in perspective and values for the present body
of social scientists.
7. Several corollaries follow :
a. If engagement in applied research of the generic kind represents a fundamen-
tal strategy for advancing the knowledge base, then the social science ‘uni-
versity’ must find a way of becoming re-associated with the larger society. As
this comes about it will alter existing systems of relations between A, B and c
Type centres.
b. It will entail some sharing of the problems of scientific choice with represent-
atives of the various clientele with whom social scientists become collabora-
tively engaged. This will bring into being a new set of criteria for ‘co-deter-
mination’ of research themes and priorities.
c. The research worker now becomes accountable not only to his scientific
colleagues but also to his participating clientele. This means extending the
concept of taking professional responsibility from the service to the research
area.
d. As regards complexity, significant innovations may be expected to arise from
group as distinct from individual creativeness. This will alter existing systems
of status and reward, which have remained individual.
e. As regards scale, aggregations of resources require to be created so that
large scale problems can be investigated not only with due regard to their
scope, which will frequently be trans-national, but to their duration, which
will frequently transcend the work life of a given scientific generation.
Re-associating the university with society
8. The process of re-associating the university with its larger society is in some
respects further advanced in other parts of the world than in Western Europe.
In the United States, universities, especially those which are pre-eminent, have
come to be regarded as part of the ‘government-industry-education complex’.
The implicit disparagement signals the danger inherent in the re-association
process. Nevertheless, any suggestion that this is merely a temporary aberration
shows a lack of understanding of the underlying change. Yet even in the United
States there is still no general recognition of problem-oriented research as an
inherent strategy for advancing the knowledge base. Nor has enough been done
to relate the basic disciplines in comprehensive schools of social science. In this
last regard some of the most promising developments are those taking place in
the newer universities in Britain.
* For an account of the development of the concept of the leading part in biology and its
extension to the social sciences, see A. ANGYAL, Foundations for a Science of Personality.124