European society in the technological era and the role of the social sciences

Abstract

This report intends, more properly speaking, to present problems and to formulate questions instead of advancing solutions. One of its presuppositions is that the more general function of research in the social sciences is to describe and understand society in each moment of its evolution, what gives it an essential role in any human community wanting to know itself. Hence the more general form of their applications: to modify, at a long term, the schemes of thought that command the interpretation of the social reality. And hence a basic instuction to be obeyed by the policies of the social sciences. As a matter of fact, what is at stake in these policies it is not reduced to the use of the research results by the political and administrative decision organs but rather includes the care of ensuring the development of the different disciplines by themselves, what is a previous condition for the progress of knowledge and, therefore, the possible applications. But the scientific policy, as it has been conducted till now as far as the social sciences are concerned, may be interpreted as a «rationalization» of the scientific production system in the sense that Max Weber gave to that concept. It shows indeed a trend, on one side, towards the «technization» and the «routinezation» of the scientific research work and, on the other side, towards the «scientifization» of the political-administrative and administrative work, i.e. the assimilation, by political and administrative decision-makers, of arguments and techniques extracted from the social research. Against this trend, the author - after describing the intellectual and institutional evolution of the social sciences in Europe and their relations with the organs of the political and administrative power - presents, in the last part of his report, a set of suggestions about the way in which scientific policies regarding the social sciences should be conducted in its main aspects.