The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Harry Hillman Chartrand
April 2002
Jean Piaget
MAIN TRENDS IN INTER-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH - Introduction & Section I
Section Index
Page
I - POSITION OF THE
PROBLEMS
9
1.
Interdisciplinary collaboration in the
9
2.
Convergence of problems within the human sciences
12
and
their relative affinity with those of the
life sciences
3.
From problems to general processes: structures,
14
The pages which follow will be continually inspired by a
certain structuralism - one which we have chiefly developed since they were
written (see the little Que sais je, ‘Le Structuralisme’, 4th edn 1970),
and which seems to us to be common to the sciences of man and to those which are
often described as ‘exact and natural’. In the areas of logico-mathematics and
physico-chemistry it is essentially a question of operative structures, which
are, however, always interdependent with a constructivism outside which they
lose their explanatory meaning. Starting at the level of biology and in
all the sciences of man, structures involve a character of autoregulation
in the cybernetic sense of the term, and we have become accustomed to describe
this study of autoregulatory structures by the term ‘genetic structuralism’. In
his book Marxism and Human Sciences, Goldmann writes: “We have . .
. defined the positive method in human sciences, and more precisely the Marxist
method, with the help of a term. . . (which we have borrowed from Jean Piaget)
genetic structuralism”. We should
only like to note, in making this connexion, that, if there is an effective
relationship between constructivist, dialectic and structuralist methods - so
long as one does not separate structures from their function and their origin -
it is that the positive character that one can find in certain forms of
dialectic depends on resorting to phenomena of autoregulation which are the
constituents of all formative development, and that these regulations are
themselves the antecedents of the autoregulating (autoréglage) which is
characteristic of the whole operative activity of the human subject in its
logico-mathematical constructions as well as in its explanatory or causal
models.
When we speak of ‘structures’, in the most general sense
of the term (mathematical, etc), our definition will nevertheless remain
limiting in the sense that it will not include any static ‘form’ at all. We shall, indeed, give to this idea the
three following characteristics: a structure implies first of all laws of
totality distinct from those of its elements, which even permit complete
disregard of those elements; secondly, its properties as a whole are laws
of transformation as contrasted with any formal laws; thirdly, every
structure implies an autoreglage in the double sense that its
compositions do not go outside its own frontiers and that they make no appeal to
anything outside such frontiers. However, this does not prevent the
structure from being able to divide itself into sub-structures which inherit its
characteristics but at the same time show their own individual characteristics.
In its final state (as opposed to
its eventual states of formation and construction) a structure constitutes
therefore a ‘closed’ system, while at the same time it is able in its turn to
integrate itself into new and wider structures, as a sub-structure. This ‘closing’ assures its autonomy and
its intrinsic powers. When
Lazarsfeld (Main Trends, Vol. I, p. 58) says: ‘One sometimes has the
impression that Piaget thinks that wherever mathematical models are used they
are by definition part of the structural movement’, he is mistaken about our
ideas: in the field of mathematics we think that we remain faithful to the
spirit of Bourbaki whose structuralism is highly specific and to the later
researches on categories of McLane Eilenberg etc.
7
One last remark. In Section I there will be found a
defence of the idea that there is no hierarchy in the science of man, as one
finds partially in the natural sciences (subordination of chemistry to physics
or of biology to physico-chemistry, etc.). R. Jakobson holds an opposite view and
naturally sees in his own discipline the key science which makes certain the
passage of biological information (code ADN) to the human sciences which
linguistics would dominate in one way or another. But he has hardly convinced us, and for
two reasons. Firstly because, as
Chomsky has shown, language is subordinate to intelligence or its logic and not
the other way round, as contemporary positivism used to believe. However important psycholinguistics may
be, especially in its psychogenetic aspects, it is thus impossible to
subordinate the psychology of the cognitive functions to linguistics. Secondly, the genetic code ADN is a
system of indicated and not of indicating (except, naturally, for
the biologist as a subject of knowledge) and the information that it transmits
belongs to such a system. To say
that the theory of information forms in this case a fundamental
interdisciplinary instrument (which does not go as far as a necessary
imperialism) is one thing, but it certainly does not involve attributing these
powers to linguistics itself, for information and language are far from being
synonymous! We shall, therefore,
more than ever stand by our model of a circular, and not a linear,
classification.
J. Piaget
1. In his famous work on the fundamentals of language
(Ourkring sprogteoriens Grundlaeggelse, Copenhagen, 1943) Hjelmslev has,
in effect, shown that a language necessarily postulates the presence of two
plans not in accordance one with each other (a lack of univocal correspondence
and also duality of nature between indicating and indicated (significant
and signifié); this prevents us from classifying as languages
structures like those of algebra, or the genetic code,
etc.
Interdisciplinary research can
result from two sorts of inquiry, one relating to common structures or
mechanisms and the other to common methods, although both sorts may of course be
involved equally. As an example of
the former we could quote this or that analysis of linguistic structuralism
leading to the question as to whether the elementary structures discovered have
any relationship with logic or with the structures of intelligence; this kind of
question has been revived in the works of N. Chomsky, 1 for,
contrary to the ‘positivist’ view that logic can be reduced to language, this
author returns to the traditional subordination of grammar to ‘reason’. As an example of the latter sort of
inquiry or the two combined, we could quote the many applications of ‘games
theory’, initially peculiar to econometrics. As this mathematical procedure can be
applied to many psychological behaviours (problem solving, thresholds of
perception, etc.) it was only natural that econometrists and psychologists
should conduct joint research on economic behaviour itself. This is the case with the works of R. D.
Luce (Individual Choice Behavior, N.Y., Wiley & Sons, 1959)
and S. Siegel and L. E. Fouraker (Bargaining and Group Decision Making,
N.Y., McGraw Hill, 1960).
In this volume, special attention
will be paid to common mechanisms.
1.
Interdisciplinary collaboration in the natural
sciences
In order to understand the situation
of the social and human sciences it is essential to start by examining that of
the natural sciences, for the differences separating these two situations, seen
from the interdisciplinary point of view, are instructive and do not appear to
be due solely to the fact that the natural sciences have a lead of a few
centuries over the human sciences.
9
Two differences, which still obtain
but may diminish in the future, oppose the natural sciences to the nomothetic
sciences of the manifold forms of human behaviour. On the one hand, the former involve a
hierarchical order, not of course as regards their importance, but as regards
the filiation of ideas and their decreasing or increasing generality and
complexity. On the other hand, by
their very development they give rise to all manner of problems of reduction or
non-reduction of phenomena of the ‘higher’ degree to those of the ‘lower’
degree. In view of these two
circumstances, each specialist is obliged continually to look beyond the
frontiers of his own discipline.
No doubt the natural sciences do not
all follow a linear order and disciplines such as astronomy, with its many
chapters, or geology, can only find their place on the lateral branches of the
common trunk. But there is a common
trunk and, going from mathematics to mechanics, then to physics and from there
to chemistry, biology and physiological psychology, we can certainly discover in
the main a series of decreasing generality and increasing complexity in
accordance with Auguste Comte’s famous criteria. Without entering into the arguments of
various kinds to which such a classification can give rise, we shall deduce from
it but two facts beyond dispute. The first is that one would seek in vain
a similar ordering in the human sciences today, and so far no one has suggested
such a thing. One can hardly
imagine placing linguistics before economics, or vice versa, for example.
2
The second is that each of the
specialists in these natural sciences actually needs a fairly good grounding in
the disciplines preceding his own in that hierarchical order and often even
needs the collaboration of research workers belonging to these preceding
sciences, which leads to the latter taking an interest in the problems raised by
the following sciences.
Thus a physicist is constantly in
need of mathematics, and theoretical physics, while lending itself to
experimentation; is essentially mathematical in its technique. Conversely, mathematicians are often
concerned with physics and they are responsible for a ‘mathematical physics’
which, despite its name, is not experimental but solves by deduction some of the
problems posed by physics. Nor
would a chemist go far without physics: theoretical chemistry is often called
‘physical chemistry’. Similarly, a
biologist needs chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. In all these fields, therefore,
interdisciplinary research is becoming increasingly imperative by the nature of
things, given the hierarchy of scales of phenomena, which corresponds to the
hierarchical order of disciplines. Whole sciences such as contemporary
biophysics or biochemistry are the inevitable products of this
situation.
But although even here we have a
rather different picture from that of the human sciences, another contrast is
even more striking. In some of the
social sciences there is certainly a tendency to reduce or, more precisely,
annex, for the ‘reduction’ desired is generally in the direction of the science
represented by the author. Sociologists have been known to reduce
everything to sociology, for example. However, no economist has, to our
knowledge, claimed that the facts studied by him can be reduced to linguistics
(or vice versa). Now in the natural
sciences, by very reason of the hierarchical filiations to which we have just
referred, the problem of reduction is constantly coming up, according
to
10
the order indicated above. Consequently interdisciplinary trends
receive a continual impetus.
This certainly does not mean that
everyone is of the same opinion or that any problem of reduction actually leads
to three possible solutions. But
these very possibilities result in a closer investigation of the problems so
that all three lead to interdisciplinary discussions. These solutions are: i) reduction from
the ‘higher’ to the ‘lower’; 2) irreducibility of the phenomenon of the “higher’
level; and 3) reciprocal assimilation by partial reduction of the ‘higher’, but
also by, enrichment of the ‘lower’ by the ‘higher’.
Many examples of these three kinds
of solution are to be found. For
instance, Auguste Comte is known to have considered chemistry as necessarily
separate from physics because the phenomenon of ‘affinity’ did not seem to him
to be reducible to the known mechanisms. History has shown, on the contrary, that
reduction was possible, and even necessary. On questions on which the current state
of knowledge remains ‘open’, such as the relations between life and
physico-chemistry, biologists are divided between the three trends. Some are of the opinion that there can
only be reduction to the physico-chemical phenomena known at present, and the
new links discovered between unorganized and living bodies confirm them in this
way of thinking. Others are of the
opinion that the vital phenomenon remains irreducible, but in order to defend
this vitalism against the former tendency they are of course obliged to study
possible connexions with chemical or physical facts just as closely. Others again quote opinions such as that
expressed by the physicist Ch. E. Guye in his Frontières entre la biologie et
Ia physico-chimie. According to
this profound author, reductions on the physical terrain itself consist almost
always in the subordination of the simple to the complex, as well as the
converse, in a finally reciprocal co-ordination, so that if a physico-chemical
explanation of life can be expected, our present physico-chemistry will gain new
properties thereby, thus becoming more ‘general’ instead of being applied
exclusively to more and more special fields.
Analysis of such thought-processes
in the development of explanations - those which have already proved acceptable
and also those which are anticipated - is very instructive for our purposes.
On the one hand, it shows the
reasons for interdisciplinary collaboration in branches where it has become
current practice and where its usefulness needs no further proof. But on the other hand, it overcomes at
the outset any prejudices we might have and it dispels the belief that any
connexion going beyond the frontiers of our own discipline is likely to lead to
exaggerated reductions and to a weakening of the specific character of the
phenomenon under study. In
particular, when we realize that ‘it is the scale which gives rise to the
phenomenon’ - a fact fully brought home by the same physicist cited above -
relationships established between processes on different scales both explain
very well and respect the specific aspects. The first half of this century witnessed
a series of partly sterile arguments between the two human sciences best fitted
to co-ordinate their findings - psychology and sociology. We shall see, in section 16 and
elsewhere, how, in this particular matter, the method of establishing mutual
relationships has made it possible to dismiss a
11
number of false problems and, on certain points, achieve
an as yet very small measure of collaboration.
As for the hierarchies which might
be established between the human sciences, this of course remains an open
question so long as the central problem of sociology, that of society considered
as a whole and the relations between the sub-systems and the whole system, is
still not solved. Meanwhile, each
discipline employs parameters which are strategic variables for other
disciplines, and this open ups a vast field of research for interdisciplinary
collaboration; but as there is no linear breakdown of the system into
sub-systems, collaboration is only too often reduced to mere juxtaposition.
On the other hand, it is very
likely that new light will be thrown on the prob1em of the hierarchy of scales
of phenomena and the related studies by the future progress of two essentially
synthetic disciplines and their repercussions on the question of infrastructures
and superstructures. These are
ethnology, the multidimensional character of which is manifest, and history,
regarded not as the mere reconstitution of events, but as interdisciplinary
research dealing with the diachronic aspects of each of the fields studied by
the various human sciences. As
these various aspects are of course interdependent, it can be hoped that, when
history eventually achieves nomothetic status, its lessons, combined with those
of ethnology and sociology in general, will bring us nearer to solutions of the
central problem of relations between the sub-systems. The future of interdisciplinary research
in the human sciences (with or without hierarchy) depends not only on these
solutions, but on many internal questions peculiar to the various disciplines
(macro- and micro-economics, etc.).
2.
Convergence of problems within the human sciences and their relative affinity
with those of the life sciences
A number of circumstances explains
why interdisciplinary research in the social and human sciences, although
generally recognized as having a great future is not taken nearly so far as in
the natural sciences. We have just
had the two main and basic reasons. But to these must be added at least two
kinds of contingent circumstances which have, even if contingent, played an
undisputed historic role. One is
the tragic splitting up of courses among university faculties which are more and
more cut off from each other, or even among sections within these faculties, but
watertight nonetheless. Whereas in
a science faculty the training of any specialist requires a more or less
extensive culture, a psychologist may know nothing about linguistics, economics,
or even sociology. If an economist
is trained in a law school, he may be completely ignorant of linguistics,
psychology, etc. Whereas some
universities, such as that of Amsterdam, for instance, in an effort to combat
this partitioning, have placed philosophy in an inter-faculty institute so as to
re-establish contact between it and the natural and social sciences, nothing
similar yet exists, to our knowledge, to co-ordinate the disciplines with which
we shall be dealing here.
The second factor of a general nature which has weighed
on the human scien-
12
ces in the past is the idea that going over the bounds
of one’s own discipline implies a synthesis and that the discipline specializing
in synthesis, if any can be said to do so (and the very fact of expressing
oneself in this way shows the weakness of such an assumption), is no other than
philosophy itself. Now philosophy
certainly includes a position of synthesis, which relates, however, to the
co-ordination of all human values, and not to the co-ordination of knowledge
alone. Consequently if disciplines such as scientific psychology or sociology
have after much difficulty achieved their independence by opposing experimental
or statistical test methods to methods of abstract reasoning, it is not in order
to return to these methods when interdisciplinary links imposed by the facts and
not by the desire for systematization are involved.
Nevertheless, if we want to have an
idea of the future of interdisciplinary research between sciences all of which
have their tried methods of approach and testing, but are not yet accustomed by
tradition to what is now current practice in the natural sciences, the best
course is perhaps to begin by comparing their problems.
Here we are immediately struck by
three fundamental facts: firstly, the convergence of certain general problems,
which are to be found in all the sectors of our huge field; secondly, the fact
that these general problems have little connexion with those of the inorganic
world, but do link fairly directly will certain central questions of the life
sciences; thirdly, that in order to solve these problems, we must have recourse
to certain cardinal ideas which actually rest on common mechanisms. If all this is true, we see immediately
to what extent the study of these common mechanisms demands, and will
increasingly demand, a concerted interdisciplinary effort which should be
encouraged in every way, among the human sciences of course, but sometimes also
in relation to biology.
First of all, confining ourselves to
the most general problems, there is little doubt that the three questions most
central and most specific of the biological sciences (for they have little
significance on the physico-chemical level) are: 1) that of the development or
evolution in the sense of gradual production of organized forms with qualitative
transformations at different stages; 2) that of organization in its balanced or
synchronic forms; and 3) that of the exchanges between the organism and
its environment (physical environment and other organisms). In other words, the three cardinal ideas
expressing the principal facts to be explained are: 1) that of the production
of new structures; 2) that of equilibrium, but in the sense of regulation
and self-regulation (and not merely the balance of forces); and 3) that of
exchange, in the sense of material exchange, but equally (for this is
also the language of contemporary biologists) 3 the
exchange of information.
It is worth noting that the study of
these central problems is conducted more and more in the light of three
instrumental methods inspired more or less directly by the human sciences, or in
any case by human activities. Although there is no common semantic
correspondence between these problems and methods (each method helps to solve
each problem), those methods are games or decision theories (Waddington refers
in this connexion to the ‘strategy of
13
genes’), information theory in general, and cybernetics
to the extent that it concerns communication, guidance or
control.
This being the case, it is evident
that these three problems of transformation (particularly diachronic
transformations), balancing and exchanges are also the three principal questions
encountered in all the human sciences. Not only are they encountered in very
specific forms in each of those sciences, but also the relations between the
diachronic and the synchronic dimension differ very significantly according to
the type of phenomenon studied: structural linguistics has thus revealed, since
F. de Saussure, that the meaning of words at a given moment in history depends
much more on the total system of the language seen from the standpoint of its
synchronic balance than on its etymology or its history. In the psychological development of an
individual, on the contrary, the final balance of the structures of the mind,
for instance, depends much more on the balancing process which characterizes the
whole of its previous development. Economic history, for its part, when it
studies the price of wool on the London market in the thirteenth century or that
of pepper in Lisbon in the sixteenth, does not see an explanation of the prices
of these commodities on the same markets today, but attempts to throw light on
these examples from history by recourse to the synchronic dimension, which
predominates in questions of values. 4
On the other hand, problems of economic structure, as opposed to economic
situations, depend upon another kind of relationship between the diachronic and
the synchronic. Exchange problems,
too, whether they be exchanges with the environment in physical or mental
production or exchanges between individuals, are common to all the human
sciences. And they combine in very
different ways with the various processes - diachronic or evolutionary and
synchronic or self-controlling.
This convergence of problems does
not of course mean that the human sciences can be reduced to the life sciences.
The former remain specific because
of the existence of cultures transmitted socially and involving an inextricable
complex of factors. But if this
specificity in itself raises a question, this is no reason for not starting with
common problems, all the more since, as we shall see, their solutions are
neither uniform, which would render their terms simply trivial, nor uniformly
different from one discipline to another, which would deprive their comparison
of interest, but are to be differentiated from one type of structure or
phenomenon to another, which means on the contrary that interdisciplinary
research is essential.
3.
From problems to general processes: structures, functions and meanings
The first question to be discussed
in connexion with the principal problems which have just been mentioned is that
of the criterion for this choice and consequently of its exhaustive or arbitrary
nature. We have a striking example
to guide us in this connexion: that of the determination of
elementary,structures (so-called ‘mother-structures’) by the Bourbaki school in
mathematics. In order to determine
these fundamental structures, from which all the others are supposed to derive
by combination or differentiation, these well-known
authors,
14
although working in a purely deductive science the
exactitude of which is universally recognized, state that the only method they
could follow was inductive and not a priori. It was by simple procedures of
systematic comparison (creation of isomorphisms) and regressive analysis that
they arrived at three structures which could not be reduced to one another, it
remaining an open question whether or not further structures should one day be
added. In this particular case one
could not a fortiori proceed differently. This simply means that the other central
ideas which might be added to those of production of structures, balancing and
exchange, seem in the present state of affairs to be reducible to them. For instance, the idea of ‘direction’,
which is so important (in biology, in developmental psychology, etc.) appears to
be the result of a compromise between the production of structures and their
gradual balancing, when the situations are sufficiently analysed. 5
This being the case, let us see what
our three ideas stand for. First of
all, when we compare the use of the term ‘structure’ in the various natural and
human sciences 6 we find the following
characteristics. Structure is, in
the first place, a system of transformations having its law, as a system, these
therefore being distinct from the properties of the elements. In the second place these transformations
have a self-regulating device in the sense that no new element engendered by
their operation breaks the boundaries of the system (the addition of two numbers
still gives a number, etc.) and that the transformations of the system do not
involve elements outside it. In the
third place, the system may have sub-systems by differentiation from the total
system (for example, by a limitation of the transformations making it possible
to leave this or that character constant, etc.) and there may be some
transformations from one sub-system to another.
However, from the standpoint of the
various disciplines, two kinds of structure must immediately be distinguished.
The first are completed, because
the way in which they are produced comes under the head of inventive deduction
or axiomatic decision (logico-mathematical structures) or physical causality
(for example, ‘group’ structures in mechanics, etc.), or because these
structures constitute the form of final or momentarily stable equilibrium of a
previous mental development (structures of the mind) or social development
(juridical structures, etc.). The
second, on the contrary, are in the process of constitution or reconstitution;
the ways in which these structures are produced come under the head of vital
processes (biological structures) or a spontaneous or ‘natural’ human genesis
(as opposed to formalizations): mental or social structures in the formative
stage, etc.
The preceding definition can be
applied forthwith to the former of these two categories, for we are concerned
here with completed structures, hence structures closed in on themselves. In this case the whole ‘production’ of
the structure becomes one with its internal transformations, without there being
any necessity for distinguishing formation and transformation, since a completed
structure is at the same time structured and indefinitely ‘structuring. In the second place, the self-regulating
system of the structure accounts for its ‘balance’, its stability being due to
the laws governing that structure, or to a set
15
of ‘norms’. There is thus no need to distinguish
structures and functions (in the biological and not the mathematical sense of
the term), for the functioning of the structure is reduced to its internal
transformations. In the third
place, there are no ‘exchanges’, except those of an internal nature, which take
the form of possible (and mutual) transitions between one sub-structure and
another.
On the contrary, in the case of
structures in the formative stage or in the process of continual reconstitution
(as with metabolism in biology) or of momentary reconstitution, the three
characteristics - production, balance and exchanges - appear in appreciably
different aspects, although the forms just described may be regarded as the
extremes of those with which we shall be concerned, the essential distinction
between the two being that the former correspond to a stable completion and the
latter to processes or developments.
In the first place, the production
of the structure appears in two forms, the second being the end-result of the
first: a formation and transformations. Consequently the organism, the thinking
being or the social group, builders of structures, are only centres of
functioning (or structuration) and not completed structures containing all
possible structures by a sort of ‘pre-formation’. 7
In other words, a
distinction should be drawn in this formative process between the function as a
‘structuring’ activity and the structure as a structured
result.
In the second place, in the case of
structures in the formative stage, the self-regulating system can no longer be
reduced to a set of rules or norms characterizing the completed structure: it
consists of a system of regulation or self-regulation, with correction of
errors, after the event, and not the ‘pre-correction’ to be found in the final
system (where self-regulation, moreover, marks the extreme of the
self-regulation which functions during the formative
stages).
Lastly, in the case of structures in
the process of constitution or continual reconstitution (as with biological
structures), exchange. is no longer limited to internal reciprocities, as is the
case between the sub-structures of a completed structure, but involves a
considerable proportion of exchange with the outside, to enable these structures
to obtain the supplies necessary for their functioning. This is so with structures in the
formative stage, as regards the development of the intelligence, when the
subject must constantly have recourse to trial and error (even in the case of
specifically logico-mathematical experiments, when the information is drawn not
from the objects as such but from the actions exerted upon them). This is especially so with biological
structures, which are elaborated solely by constant exchanges with the
environment, by means of those mechanisms of assimilation of the environment to
the organism and adjustment of the latter to the former which constitute the
transition from organic life to behaviour and even mental
life.
A living structure, as Bertalanffy
has shown, constitutes an ‘open’ system in the sense that it is preserved
through a continual flow of exchanges with the outside world. Nevertheless, the system does have a
cycle closing in on itself in that its components are maintained by interaction
while being fed from outside. Such
a structure can be described statically since it is preserved despite its
perpetual activity, but as a rule it is dynamic since it constitutes the more or
less stable form of continual transformations.
16
Considered from the standpoint of
its activity, therefore, an ‘organized’ structure has a way of functioning which
is the expression of the transformations characteristic of it. The word ‘function’ is usually applied to
the role (sector of activity or sector of functioning) played by a sub-structure
in the functioning of the total structure and, by extension, the action of the
total functioning on that of the sub-structures.
Any functioning involves production,
exchange and balancing, that is, it continually presupposes decisions or
choices, information and regulation. The result is that, even in the
biological field as such, the very ideas of structure and function carry with
them the derived ideas of functional utility or value and
meaning.
In the first place, any function or
functioning involves choices or selections among the internal or external’
elements. Consequently an element
can be said to be useful when it enters as a component into the cycle of the
structure, and harmful if it threatens to interrupt the continuity of the cycle.
But two sorts of functional utility
or ‘value’ must be distinguished:
1. Primary utility, that is, the utility of an
internal or external element (production or exchange) in relation to the
structure concerned, but insofar as this element has a qualitative effect on the
production or preservation of the structure as an organized form; for example,
the utility of a food containing calcium for bone preservation or the utility of
a group of genes in a genetic recombination likely to
survive.
2. Secondary utility: related to the cost or gain
stemming from the element which is useful in sense 1: cost of a transformation,
of an exchange, etc., in its functioning.
Consequently this distinction
refers, on the one hand, to the relational or formal aspect of the structures,
hence to the structural aspect as such, and, on the other hand, to the energetic
aspect of the functioning. These
two aspects are of course inseparable, for there is no structure without
functioning, and vice versa. But
they are different, for in any production and in any exchange it is necessary to
distinguish a) what must be produced or what must be acquired or exchanged,
having regard to the structures to be maintained or built up; and b) what that
production or exchange costs or earns having regard to the energy
available.
Yet another distinction should be
made as we review these general principles of biology capable of serving as a
background for the analysis of the common mechanisms peculiar to the various
human sciences. This distinction
relates to the role of information, the latter being necessary for production,
as it is for exchanges and control:
1. Information can be immediate, when a stimulus
identified at once proyokes a response forthwith, which means that
spatio-temporal distance is abolished.
2. Information can, on the contrary, be mediate
if there is an encoding in accordance with a fixed code and a decoding which
occurs later (which means that spatio-temporal distance is not zero). The genetic information stored in
germinal materials (deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, whose code is made up
of sequences, as Watson and Crick discovered in 1953) is described in
this way.
17
Special mention should be made of the ‘signals’
(indices significatifs) which release instinctive behaviour (Lorenz,
Tinbergen, Grassé and others).
It is therefore essential to take into account the idea
of communication in addition to the structures and values of functioning,
insofar as it is possible that a given element cannot be integrated as such, at
least at once, in an existing structure or may have no direct or immediate
functional value, but can constitute the representative or announcer of
subsequent structurations or functioning.
Two cases have then to be distinguished: a) the representative is not
recognized as such by the organism, in other words, it does not affect
behaviour, but participates in a kind of storage or reserve of information which
is used later - it is in this sense that we speak of genetic information etc.;
or the transmission of information which characterizes the feedback as opposed
to the main energetic process the adjustment of which is controlled by the
feedback; b) this representative is used in ‘behaviour’ and thus becomes a
signalling stimulus, etc. This brings us to the threshold of the systems of
messages affecting human behaviour.
In all, we thus have before us three
broad categories of ideas: structures or forms of organization;
functions, sources of qualitative or energetic values; and
messages. All three of
course give rise to problems which may be diachronic - problems of evolution and
construction - or synchronic - problems of balance and control, or problems of
exchanges with the environment - but obviously the relations between the
diachronic and the synchronic dimensions cannot be the same, according as to
whether structures, functional utilities or messages are in
question.
What should be done in order to enter upon the analysis
of the common mechanisms considered by the various human sciences is thus to
translate this general theory into terms of human behaviour. Here a preliminary remark is called for.
The production, regulation or
exchange which occurs in the forms we have just reviewed may be organic as much
as mental or intra-physic, and we started speaking of the organic as our initial
frame of reference. Although most
of the human sciences deal with human behaviour without attempting to delimit in
detail what is conscious and what is unconscious, the disciplines in which an
explicit relationship between mind and body can continually give rise to
problems, as in psychology, have moved in the direction of parallelism and
isomorphism. We can interpret the
‘psycho-physiological parallelism’ in terms of a more general isomorphism
between causality, the field of application of which is actually
restricted to matter, and implication in the broad sense, which is the
sui generis relation uniting messages peculiar to the conscious state.
The few general ideas referred to
in the present section should be viewed in terms of conscious
implications.
While all the human sciences deal
with production, regulation and exchange and all use for this purpose the ideas
of structure, functional utility and meaning envisaged diachronically and
synchronically by turns, these ideas appear in
18
different forms according as the researcher takes a
theoretical or abstract standpoint, or again takes into account the behaviour of
the subjects and even the way in which that behaviour impacts upon their minds.
From the first of these two
standpoints the specialist will seek the most objective language to describe
structures. This he will do in
varying terms but as a rule they will be capable of formalization or of
mathematical expression. For
instance, he will describe kinship structures in terms of algebraic systems, in
the same way as Levi-Strauss; transformational grammars in terms of monoids, in
the same way as Chomsky; or micro- and macro-economic structures in terms of
contingency or cybernetic diagrams, etc. However, none of all this directly
affects the mind of the subject.
On the contrary, in the
psychological research which we are pursuing concerning the development of the
intelligence in the child and the adolescent, we also try of course to translate
into abstract language the structures of intellectual operations evidenced by
the behaviour of the subjects, and we use for this purpose various
logico-mathematical structures coming under the head of ‘groups’, ‘networks’ and
‘groupings’; but we also try to discover the form these structures take in the
minds of the subjects, 8 insofar as their reasoning is
expressed in words and is accompanied by various intentional justifications:
what we discover is of course no longer an abstract structure but a set of
intellectual rules or norms which take the form of impressions of
‘logical necessity’, etc. When a
sociologist of law investigates why, a legal system (formalizable or codifiable
as a ‘pure’ normativist construction in the manner of Kelsen), is ‘recognized’
as valid by the subjects of laws, he is confronted with a series of bilateral or
multilateral relations such as that a ‘right’ for some corresponds to an
‘obligation’ for others, etc., and what these facts imply is in turn expressed
in terms of specific rules. When a
logician axiomatizes a certain number of operations with the consequences which
derive from them, he does not have to pay the slightest attention to the subject
who performs them. But he may
perfectly well concern himself with the normative aspect of the connexions he is
manipulating and may even end by constructing, with Ziembinski, Weinberger,
Peklov, Prior and others, a logic of ‘norms’ 9 (and
even, with Weinberger, applying it to the legal norms). 10 Likewise, linguistic structures are
translated in the consciousness of subjects by rules of grammar, even if this
translation is inadequate, as indeed are many other translations (through
realization) of structures in the form of rules.
The general and interdisciplinary
problems that are going to arise in this connexion (see sections 5 to 9
below) now become evident at once: comparison of various types of structures,
comparison of systems of rules (depending on whether these systems come close to
the methods of logical composition or diverge from them in the direction of
simple constraints or miscellaneous dominance), comparison of various
translations or realizations of structures in the form of rules (adequate or
inadequate, and why), etc.
Another major system of notions concerning the actual
experiences of individuals in their mental life or in their collective relations
is the system of values or realization of functional utility which we
mentioned in section 3 above. The
re-
19
markable thing, showing once more the profound unity of
reactions of all living beings in the social and human as well as the biological
spheres, is that the distinction between primary utility or utility relative to
the qualitative aspects of production or of the conservation of structures, and
secondary utility or that relative to the energetics of functioning, recurs in
the sphere of experienced values in the form of what we shall call ‘values of
finality’ and ‘values of yield’.
Values of finality include, in
particular, normative values which are determined by rules: a moral value such
as those which, in all human societies, distinguish actions judged to be good
from those judged to be bad or indifferent, refers of necessity to a system of
rules. The same applies a
fortiori to legal values. In
the sphere of individual or collective representations, judgements are valorized
as true or false (bivalent values) or true, false, or plausible but not yet
determinable, etc. (trivalent or polyvalent values) in terms of the accepted
rules. Notions are elaborated,
accepted or rejected by virtue of multiple value judgements and, while
constituting structures, are constantly valorized, but once again in terms of
overall normative structures. Aesthetic values do not depend on rules
as imperative as these, but nevertheless refer to more or less regulated
structures. On a more individual
level, a subject’s interest in a particular group of objects or a particular
kind of work in the form of miscellaneous finalities may be remote from any
normative structure and depend solely on regulations, but may also be organized
according to more or less stable scales of values.
However, there also exist values of
yield linked with the costs and profits of functioning. It may be argued that economic and even
praxeological values are all more or less hedged around by legal norms: an
individual who does not pay his debts is proceeded against and another who
steals, i.e. practises what Sageret jocularly described as the most economical
form of conduct (maximum of profit with minimum of expense), is
punished by law. But the definition
of the frontiers between what is perrmitted and what is forbidden is one thing
and the actual determination of a value by a norm is another. Economic value obeys its own laws which
legal rules cannot determine and which do not in themselves lay down any
obligation (a norm is recognizable by an obligation which may be honoured or
violated, as opposed to a causal determinism which constrains but does not
‘oblige’ in this normative sense). Economic value is of course inseparable
from all kinds of values of finality and normative values; likewise, the
internal praxeology of an organism or of individual behaviour (that ‘economy’
which certain psychologists hold to be the principle of elementary affectivity)
is connected with many questions of structure. But the general problems of cost and
profit are quite distinct from those raised by other forms of evaluation and
cannot but lead to multiple interdisciplinary research, as the numerous and
increasingly widespread applications of the theory of games
demonstrate.
Thirdly, in all spheres of human
behaviour there are systems of meanings or messages, the essential part
of which is studied by linguistics within the collective system of language.
But while language has played a
role of the first importance in human societies by the oral and written
transmission of values and rules of every kind, it does not constitute the only
system of signs and especially of symbols belonging to the mechanism of
messages. Without mentioning the
20
language of animals (bees, etc.), which raises all kinds of problems of comparison, it should be remembered that the appearance of representation in individual development is not due to language alone but to a much wider semeiotic function also including symbolic play, mental image, drawing and all forms of deferred and interiorized imitation (the latter constituting the transitional term between sensori-motor functions and representational functions). Further, language - which constitutes, so to speak, a system of messages to the power of one - is accompanied in collective life by systems to the power of two, such as myths which are simultaneously symbol and semantic characters carried by verbal or graphic sign-vehicles. Thus general semeiology gives rise to interdisciplinary problems of the broadest kind.
1. See N.
CHOMSKY, Cartesian Linguistics,
London, 1966.
2. It is
worth mentioning, though, that F. de Saussure took inspiration from economic
doctrines of equilibrium when founding his synchronic structuralism. But he might just as easily have based
his distinctions on that between organ and function in biology.
3. For
instance, Schmalhausen.
4. In this
connexion cf. J. F. BERGIER and L. SOLARI, Pour une méthodologie des sciences
economiques, Geneva, Librairie de l’Université, 1965, p. 15, where J. F.
Bergier refers to ‘a verification of the mechanisms of price formation insofar
as these are timeless and imperative’, an opinion on which Chapter IV shows that
economists are not always in agreement.
5. On the
contrary, it is clear that different degrees and types of balancing or controls
giving a direction must be distinguished. Soviet authors, while emphasizing that
the mechanisms of retroaction are an indispensable attribute of the higher
degrees of organization of structures, maintain that ‘plan regulators’ are
necessarily accompanied by ‘regulators of statistical structure’, which are not
identical with them (see Y. A. LEVADA,
‘Knowledge and Direction in Social Processes’, Voprosy filosofli 5,
1956).
As for the problems
of typology in general, they are studied closely in economics and linguistics,
less effectively in psychology and sociology But it is doubtful whether they
could lead to interdisciplinary research at the present time (except in
economics and sociology), for the ‘types’ differ considerably from one field to
another.
6. For this
comparison see J. PIAGET, Le
structuralisme, Paris, P.U.F., 1968, translation London,
1971.
7. If the
human subject or the social group were more than centres of functioning, if they
constituted a ‘structure of all the structures’ (which is impossible both
because of the known categorical antinomies and because of the theorems on the
limits of formalization), they would merge with the ‘transcendental subject’ of
a priori idealism.
8. This does
not mean, as just stated, that consciousness is cause, since it remains
parallel to its physiological concomitants; but it involves systems of meanings
mutually connected by implications, in isomorphism with the sequences of
neurological causality.
9. B.
PEKLOV, ‘Ueber Norminferenzen’, Logique
et Analyse 28, 1964, pp. 203—211.
10. O.
WEINBERGER, ‘Einige Betrachtungen Uber die
Rechtnorm vom Standpunkt des Logik und der Semantik’, Logique et Analyse
28, 1964, pp. 212—232.