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

The place of the sciences of man in the system of sciences 45
namely (a), and their derived epistemology (d), it becomes clear that the object
of logic cannot be entirely separated from the subject, in so far as logic formalizes
operational structures built up by the latter; and the order of the sciences
must become circular once again.
This circularity is indeed extremely interesting when we study the epistemology
of the sciences of man, for it reflects the fundamental circle which characterizes
the inter-action of the subject and the object: the subject is only aware
of the object through its own activities, but can only learn to know itself through
its action upon the object. Physics is thus a science of the object, but it only
reaches the object through the intermediary of logico-mathematical structures
resulting from the activities of the subject. Biology is another science of the
object, but the living being it studies, using instruments borrowed in part from
physico-chemistry, is at the same time the starting-point of the behaviour pattern
of a subject which leads to the human subject. In studying the latter, psychology
and the sciences of man use some of the techniques of the earlier sciences, but the
human subject also builds up logico-mathematical structures which provide a
starting-point for the formalizations of logic and mathematics. In sum, the
scientific system as a whole is caught up in an endless spiral, the circular motion
of which has no negative effects in itself but simply gives expression to the dialectic
between subject and object in its most general form.
One thus sees that the sciences of man, while remaining the most difficult and
complex, occupy a privileged position in the scientific circle: as sciences of the
subject which itself builds up the other sciences, they cannot be separated from
these others without being artificially simplified and distorted; but if the human
subject is put back in his proper place, which is at the same time that of a culmination
in the perspective of the physical and biological object, and of a
creative starting-point in the perspective of action and reflexion, the sciences of
man alone render the closing, or rather the internal coherence, of this circle of
sciences intelligible.
7. Major theoretical trends: forecast and explanation
I. In so far as the sciences of man cannot be isolated, but are part of the whole
complex of sciences, and in so far as this complex assumes a generally circular
or spiral form, the problem which dominates the main theoretical trends is
assuredly that of the specificity or, on the contrary, the reducible character, of
the phenomena studied in the different branches of science; for if the concepts of
interaction and interdependence are gradually taking the place of linear series
or simple genealogical structures, the question naturally arises whether the
trend is towards general assimilation, or towards relational or dialectical
modes of interpretation in which both oppositions and analogies are taken into
account.
This is no mere academic question, but a very real problem. In psychology
there is a tendency to reduce observable facts to physiology on the one hand
and to sociology on the other, while overlooking the specificity of the mental
factor. In sociology, there is a tendency to reduce behaviour to a scale close to