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

46 Jean Piagel
that of social psychology or to economics, linguistics, and so on, without paying
attention to the specific objects proper to sociology - the overall forms of so-
ciety. Broadly speaking, wherever we find differences of scale - for in the scien-
ces of man as well as in the natural sciences it is the scale that creates the phenom-
enon, as Ch. E. Guye so penetratingly observed - the problem is to determine
whether mechanisms on a higher scale can be reduced to serve on the lower ones,
or whether the former simply cannot be reduced, or again whether there is any
intelligible relation between the two.
This problem is commonly met with in the natural sciences. Laplacian
determinism was a dream of integral reducibility such that the whole universe,
in its innumerable manifestations, could be reduced to a basic equation from
which all others would be derived. A. Comte, however, despite the linear form
of his classification of the sciences, considered each stage to be marked by some
irreducible concept; for instance, he opposed the reduction of chemical affinity
to the laws of physics. In fact, however - except where there has been simple
reduction (that is, the discovery of identity beneath apparent dissimilarity) -
the problem of reduction in the physico-chemical sciences usually leads to cir-
cular causality through reciprocal assimilation. Einstein, for instance, was able
to do without the Newtonian force of attraction at a distance by reducing the
movements of the heavenly bodies to inert movements along the curves of
Riemannian space. This geometrical concept of gravitation was accompanied by
a physical concept of space, in that the curves were regarded as being determined
by masses. Similarly, after a period of attempts at reduction, the relations be-
tween mechanics and electro-magnetism led to interdependence and progres-
sions out of which came wave mechanics.
Obviously, in the sciences of man, while problems of this nature are constant-
ly arising, although in quite different terms, the range of possible solutions is in
general smaller, due to the lack of such highly-developed logico-mathematical
or even experimental techniques. Yet again we find the same triad - reduction,
the specificity of phenomena at the higher level, and causality with retrogressive
action.
An everyday example of this can be seen in the relations between language,
which is a group mechanism and in that respect superior, and intelligence or
thinking, which is restricted to the individual and in that respect lies at a lower
level. We shall deal with this question more fully in Chapter w (section 16).
For the time being, we need only point out that, while the reduction of grammar
to ‘reason’ seemed obvious in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
view that thought is subordinate to language prevailed subsequently and has
continued to be held until very recently. Chomsky, however to some extent
returns to the classical position, but his discovery of transformation grammars
makes it possible to analyse psycho-linguistic interactions much more thorough-
ly than heretofore, in conjunction with the psycho-genetic study of the cognitive
functions; in the present state of knowledge, therefore, it appears that intelli-
gence comes before and conditions the mastery of language, although there are
reactions within the process, in which both innate and acquired knowledge is
overtaken by a more general mechanism of progressive equilibration. We are