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Systematic and Applied Sciences
The most urgent reform needed in humanities is to establish the
division of labours common in natural sciences. In their realm there is no
professional hierarchy between systematic science (comparative literary
history), applied technology (applied linguistics), cultural ideology
(jubilee journalism), school education (language teaching), handicrafts
(practical criticism) and occult sciences (hermeneutics). This is an
explosive social situation when professors of systematic zoology, veterinary
doctors, horse-breeders and milkmaids have to compete at university for one
professorial chair. Without a functional division of labours these
specialities cannot fulfil their appropriate social roles.
When analysing different application levels inside a science we have
to clearly distinguish two theoretical boundaries: (1) one between science
and technology and (2) that between theoretical research and everyday
practice (politology vs. politics, religionistics vs. religion, literary
theory vs. practical criticism). The goals of academic science and applied
technology are principally different, the former tries to develop trustworthy
knowledge of existing reality whereas the latter aims to create some new
reality for human needs. The former endeavours to trace the evolutionary laws
of nature while the latter considers only their use for human society in
order to apply them for devising new facilities. Their essential differences
are summed up in Table 6.
Table 6 The opposition
between academic science and applied technology In social sciences
advances of the 19th century brought a great predominance of
comparative, evolutionary and typological methods while the 20th
century shifted the focus on formal, structural or functionalist techniques.
The clash between external and internal approaches shows a great
misunderstanding as to disciplinary boundaries dividing academic and applied
research. Humanities cannot develop their professional applications because
their confusing makes them deny one another’s specific rights and
suppress their social functioning. To abolish external methods in natural
sciences means to abolish science as such and to replace systematic biology
by applied technology, by animal husbandry or agronomy. Confusing application
levels distorts academic studies and disables humanities to such an extent as
if the curricula of the Faculty of Natural Sciences were replaced by those of
a
Table 7 The division of labours and
application levels in linguistics The rational layout of basic application levels
with their respective methods, school institutions and varieties in
linguistics is outlined on Table 7. Besides there is a number of other false
substitutes that distort academic studies into cultural ideology,
entertainment, creative essay writing and popular journalism. Religion,
ideology, education, entertainment, technology and craft do not pursue any
cognitive purpose, they provide spiritual or material
technology for improving and prettifying man’s world. Only facultative
sciences may enjoy academic status because they deal with information
processing, with collecting, archiving, storing, retrieving, diagnosing,
measuring and examining data. They concern data processing where applied
technology specialises in ‘reality-processing’ activities. Table
8 gives a brief survey of constructive and remedial applied sciences in
comparison with two types of facultative sciences in the right two columns.
Table 8 Fields of applied technology in
natural and social studies
Facultative and applied fields of study need a systematic classification into
formal, descriptive, constructive and remedial techniques. The first group
(A) surveys facultative disciplines pursuing goals of description,
recognition, reception, diagnostics, measurement and inspection. The second
group (B) concerns ‘reality-processing’ fields enquiring into
production, construction and development. Their techniques are in close
relation to managemental care listed in the group (C). This includes branches
dealing with management, maintenance, control and technical care. Repair
services fall into the section D of remedial techniques, while preventive and
terminative (extinctive) technologies (E-F) stand apart because they pursue
human sake by means of removing harmful defects. The last set of techniques
(G) includes occult sciences that pretend false fictive work in assistance
with supernatural forces. A. Recognitive
disciplines: 1. recognitive ‘-gnomies’
(physiognomy, botanical keys, OCR, algorithms of sentence analysis, recognitive and
categorial grammars) 2.
facultative inspecting ‘-scopies’ (endoscopy,
microscopy, demoscopy), 3. descriptive
‘-graphies’ (cartography, demography,
dialectography), 4. measuring
‘-metrics’, devised for an exact
quantification of size and occurrence (econometrics, sociometrics, demometry,
phonometry), 5. instructive and introductory ‘-agogics’
(isagoge, isagogics, pedagogy). B. Constructive
technology: 1. productive
manufacturing ‘-urgies’ (metallurgy, chirurgy), 2.
constructive and building ‘-tectonics’ (architectonics), 3. growth
genetics (psychogenetics, ontogeny of children’s speech), 4. educational ‘-pedies’ (pedagogy,
orthopedy, logopedics). C.
Managemental technology: 1.
cultivating ‘-cultures’ (agriculture,
horticulture, pisciculture), 2.
cattle-breeding ‘-trophies’ (hippotrophy
‘keeping horses’), 3.
managemental ‘-nomies’ (economy
‘house-keeping’, agronomy), D.
Remedial technology: 1.
curative ‘–therapeutics’,
(psychotherapeutics, error correction), 2.
curative ‘-iatries’
(psychiatry, pediatry, pediatrics, phoniatry). 3.
repair services (motor-car repair, electricity
fixing). E.
Preventive technology: 1.
preventive protective „prophylactics“
(psychoprophylactics). F.
Terminative technology: 1. extinctive
‘–machies’ (myomachy ‘mouse
extinction’, deratisation) G. Manipulative pseudo-sciences: 1. cultic
‘-agogies’ manipulating with masses (mystagogy,
demagogy, commercial advertisements,
electoral
propaganda, political ideology), 2. occult
interpretative ‘-mancies’ (chiromancy,
astrology, hermeneutics), 3. worshipping
cults and ‘-latries’ (idolatry, physiolatry), 4. belief-prescribing
doctrines and ‘-doxies’ (orthodoxy, katechesis). Extract from P.
Bělíček: Ad reformandum universitatem: Towards a Reform
of Modern University Studies. |