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

44 Jean Piagei
Generally speaking, all scientific epistemology, whether connected with
perception, language (as related to thought) or operational structures, refers
implicity or explicitly to psychological interpretations. But in the place of psy-
chology, of a summary and sometimes speculative type, one might conceive of a
corpus of research aimed at the experimental control of the various psycholog-
ical hypotheses involved in the many epistemologies of number, space, time,
etc. This task, known as ‘genetic epistemology’ is in fact being carried out
systematically by an interdisciplinary team of research workers who call upon
the assistance of development psychologists, logicians and specialists of the
disciplines involved in respect of each epistemological question. It cannot
then be denied that this movement partakes in the sciences of man, although
the research may be undertaken on the epistological aspects of the exact and
natural sciences. Here again, epistemology emerges as a link between the two
groups of disciplines.
If, finally, we try to place the sciences of man within the scientific system as
a whole, the preceding comments show that it is impossible to confine ourselves
to a mere linear classification.
A model for these linear classifications was provided by A. Comte who arrang-
ed the sciences in the order of their increasing complexity and decreasing
generality. Such a series, applied to our present problem, would work out
roughly as follows : mathematics, physical sciences, biological sciences, psychol-
ogy and lastly the social sciences in their interdependence. But here the problem
of situating logic becomes immediately evident. Comte himself did not attempt
to solve this problem, no doubt because modern symbolic logic had not taken
shape in his day; but he often speaks of ‘natural logic’ either to dwell on its
r61e in the constitution of mathematics, or, more implicitly, by regarding it as a
product of collective life, which amounts in effect to placing it in the field of
social realities (and the later ‘logical positivism’ links it explicitly with linguis-
tics in their more general aspects). Now, if logic has some connexion with the
human subject, and we have seen above that there are sound reasons for accept-
ing this ideal today, it wil therefore belong to the fields lying at the end of the
series, while still playing a fundamental part in mathematics which is at the
head of the list - which leads one to the conclusion that the linear order is an
illusion and that we are in fact moving in a circle.
In reality none of the sciences can be displayed on a single plane, for each
involves hierarchical levels: a) its object or the material content of study; b)
its conceptual interpretation or theoretical technique; c) its epistemology or
analysis of its bases; and d) its derivative epistemology or analysis of relations
between the subject and the object in relation to the other sciences,
If we deal only with level (b), and possibly (c), that is, with theoretical tech-
niques of sciences and their internal epistemology, the linear order in question is
wholly acceptable and logic must be placed at the head of the list, for logicians
do not consult psychologists or even linguists to assist in working out their
axiomatization; mathematicians must submit to the demands of logic but not to
those of physics or biology, etc.
On the other hand, as soon as we come to consider the object of disciplines,