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

The place of the sciences of man in the system of sciences 49
third process, which is essential to the explanation. This is the construction of a
‘model’ adapted to fit the facts themselves - a model so constructed that
deductive transformations can be made to correspond to real transformations,
so that the model is the projection of the logico-mathematical pattern into
reality, and thus consists of a concrete representation based upon the real
modes of composition or of transformation that can be expressed in terms of
the pattern. A cybernetic circuit, for example, is not merely a matter of equa-
tions - it amounts to the identification of the details of the supposed feedbacks
in the facts. Of course, in that case, facts wil lead only to the recognition of
laws, but laws on different scales; and themodel consists in putting them together
to form a coherent system that corresponds, term for term, with deduced or
deducible mathematical transformations. In a word, the model is explanatory
in so far as it enables us to give the objective processes themselves a ‘structure’
which is itself isomorphous.
We are thus led back to the classical rationalist interpretations of causality,
not simpiy as mere regular successions as in Hume’s empiricism, but as the
reason for things (causa seu ratio, as Descartes said) or as an analogy between
deduction from experience (Kant) and dialectical construction. Such questions
as whether this causality relates to strict determinism or to probabilist models
and whether it reaches linear successions or always in fact moves towards loop
systems or circular interactions, are unimportant detaiIs, for in all cases the
characteristic property of causality -that it is a deductive construction which is
part and parcel of the real - remains, thanks to the inexhaustible wealth of
experience and the limitless fecundity of logico-mathematical structures.
III. At this point, however, a problem pecuIiar to the human sciences inevitabty
arises - the problem of the interpretation of the facts of consciousness as oppos-
ed to material facts - and this brings us to the general question of understanding
(Verstehen) as opposed to explanation (Erkliiren).
Psychologists are familiar with the problem, which is that of the relation be-
tween consciousness and the body. Two classical solutions to this problem have
been put forward - that of interaction and that of parallelism or isomorphism.
The first of these regards consciousness as being or possessing a kind of power
that can act on the body, just as the body can act on the consciousness. The
difficulty here is that properties peculiar to matter (work, strength, energy and
so on) are attributed to consciousness and, theoretically speaking, this makes it
difficult to uphold the principle of the conservation of energy15 in cases where
this intervention of consciousness occurs in physiological mechanisms; this
cannot be verified by experiment, for what we observe is the action of the physi-
ological concomitants and not the action of consciousness as such. It should be
noted that the numerous positive data collected by so-called psychosomatic or
(according to the ideology adopted) cortico-visceral medicine prove nothing
about this, for they merely show the effect of mental life (including both con-
sciousness and higher nervous activity) on organs regulated by hormones and
nerves; they do nothing to show how consciousness as such acts independently
of its nervous concomitants.