Psychology is an integral part of our modern society, and its influence is quite widespread. Many important decisions, which are made in our society, can be based on psychology - decisions which affect the lives of many people. This is why it is important to determine whether or not psychology is a science. The answer to the question if psychology is a science is not a simple 'yes' or 'no' – it depends on the area of psychological study, on the theory used within an area, and often on the way the researcher chooses to study a phenomenon ( Makunda, 1997). It also depends on what is meant by 'scientific' – for the philosopher of science Karl Popper, for instance, the most important criterion was what he called 'falsifiability'. There are also other criteria of science, which I am going to present in this essay. I will examine different psychological theories in the light of different aspects of scientific endeavour. Defining science is not an easy task. There are many different concepts of science. According to Webster (1992) science is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena, through objective means. Put it simply scientists conduct experiments and observations to collect data about world and to explain these facts. Chalmers (1999) states that science is something visible, touchable, hearable, rather than opinions or beliefs. Davies says that: “Science is a structure based upon facts”(as cited in Chalmers, 1999, p. 1). The American Heritage Science Dictionary appears to encompass the general consensus, and defines science as: “The investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced... ... middle of paper ... ...aim at scientific principles to measure the whole world. In many areas of psychology there is no attempt to generalise from some human behaviour to all human behaviour. .It might be a more worthwhile exercise to divide psychology into its separate fields and ask the question of each. It could be argued that the behaviorist approach is the most scientific, focussing on what people do, rather than how they think; something that is observable. The approach ignores speculation while putting emphasis on objectivity. Conversely, most of Freud’s theories within the psychodynamic approach seem untestable, unfalsifiable and, ultimately, unscientific. The question and answer sessions associated with psychoanalysis rely on introspection, of which there is scientific doubt. Without doubt is that he debate of psychology as a science will probably remain a debate for some time.
Psychology comprises of two words originally used by the ‘Greeks’, ‘psyche’, defining the mind, soul or spirit and lastly ‘logos’ being study. Both words define together the ‘study of the mind’. Psychology perspectives evaluate the normal and abnormal behaviour and how persons’ deal with different concepts of issues and problems. Psychology theories’ are based on ‘common sense’, but its scientific structure, everything needs to be evaluated and tested, therefore, promoting different psychological theories’.
Humans have inhabited the Earth for thousands of years and it is perceived by many that we are among the most intellectual species on this planet. Although having lived on this planet for so long, being able to distinguish fact from fiction has escaped the minds of many. People of today’s society are easily influenced by what is told to them instead of what can be proven. Believing in something that has no scientific evidence is not only absurd but can be classified simply as ignorance. Many of the erratic ideas that are believed by many today have originated in a time where superstition was more popular than science. These beliefs appear to be proven by science, but in reality are not valid and frequently confused with true psychology, this is called pseudoscience or psuedopyschology. These beliefs remain intact for many years primarily because those who choose to believe these psuedopyschologies are the ones who try to prove that they are in fact valid, and tend to ignore the evidence that proves them wrong.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a psychologist and analyze how their theories impact society in general. Sigmund Freud, one of the most recognized names in psychology to date, had developed some eccentric theories that many scientists still accept as having some factual basis. His theories on hypnotherapy, psychosexual development, and defense mechanisms gives people the ability to control and predict their future behavior. These theories, being recognized as some of the most remarkable and influential, have transformed a generation of free thinkers and scientists. His ideas have paved the way to what is now universally known as the field of psychology.
Psychology can be broadly defined as the scientific and systematic study of people’s behavior and mental processes.
In 1913 a new movement in psychology appeared, Behaviorism. “Introduced by John Broadus Watson when he published the classic article Psychology as the behaviorist views it.” Consequently, Behaviorism (also called the behaviorist approach) was the primary paradigm in psychology between 1920 to 1950 and is based on a number of underlying ‘rules’: Psychology should be seen as a science; Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events, like thinking and emotion; People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior; Behavior is the result of stimulus resulting in a response; and All behavior is learned from the environment. How we process these stimuli and learn from our surrounds
As Fodor states in his 1997 papers conclusion one must not only attack the generalizations but also the evidence, predictions and then the generalizations don’t actually yield true results. As he simply states, “You have to actually do the science,” (Fodor, 1997. p.162). Once you do this you can clearly see that mental states can be multiply realized in so far that results are logically confirmed. Through examples and explicating why Kim’s conclusion is a fallacy I have shown that Fodor’s conclusion that psychology is a science is valid.
The problem that plagues Sir Popper is the clear definition of science and pseudoscience. Though the empirical method is common to both, the level of inferential data varies greatly. One can amass large amounts of data by observing human behavior, but data alone is not the stuff of scientific theory. Theories must be assembled fusing factual data, and inducive reasoning. The point of induction seems to be where science and pseudoscience must part ways. A scientific theory will, after applying raw data, leave little room for inference. On the other hand, a pseudoscience allows the experiment to progress in any number of directions. Popper becomes quite aware of this dilemna of the social scientist when he applies both Freud and Adlers conflicting psychological theories to the same test case, and they perform equally well. This brings him to the question of whether social theories explain human behavior or simply adapt to it. Physical sciences, as the name implies, depend on physical eveidence to defend their theories.
The American Psychological Association [APA] (2014) defines psychology as “the study of the mind and behavior[sic]”, encompassing all facets of the human experience (para. 1). This study of the mind and behaviour is scientific in nature and people who work in this field are called psychologists. Psychologists are interested in studying overt behaviours (actions and responses that can be observed directly) but are particularly interested in studying covert behaviours which are internal processes that cannot be observed directly (Jackson, 2008).
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333.
In the primary years of psychology as an empirical science, many people believed that cognition and human behavior cannot be studied scientifically because it cannot be measured directly and observed accurately. This was called behaviorism and scientists who studied this were called behaviorists. However, doubt and skepticism began to emerge when language could not be explained through a behavioristic perspective (Chomsky, 1959). Based on these doubts, scientists started focusing on the human mind and cognition which led to the emergence of cognitive psychology. This field has greatly excelled our knowledge and confidence from explaining abstract concepts like emotions, to addressing the various attribution errors humans tend to make.
In terms of a traditional science, one key point is empiricism: a reliance on observations of behaviours instead of our logical reasoning, to further aid explanations of why humans act in certain ways (Valentine, 1992:5). In this way Psychology could be considered a science as psychologists are constantly monitoring behaviours some may perceive as common sense, for example Milgram’s study into obedience (1974). However, for an outcome of any observation to be correct, we must have faith in how it was measured. Two further questions arise from this in relation to Psychology as a scientific measure: whether Psychology doe’s mis-measure, and secondly whether, as some propose, Psychology is ordinari...
Science is the body of organized knowledge. Science is the collection of ideas and theories and the methodology used by people to prove them. It is the set of methods that people follow in order to explain the things that they see, the things that they perceive and the things that they believe in.
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
Science is the observation of natural events and conditions in order to discover facts about them and to formulate laws and principles based on these facts. Academic Press Dictionary of Science & Technology --------------------------------------------------------------------- Science is an intellectual activity carried on by humans that is designed to discover information about the natural world in which humans live and to discover the ways in which this information can be organized into meaningful patterns. A primary aim of science is to collect facts (data).
Natural sciences is a “science or knowledge of objects or processes observable in nature, as biology or physics, as distinguished from the abstract or theoretical sciences, as mathematics or philosophy.” (dictionary.com) Natural sciences explores in four broad fields, physic, chemistry, biology and earth sciences. Knowledge in natural science are generally inductive reasoning which are more defined and often derived from multiple research and experiments. To the scientists, evidences should be preferably gathered by many different people, as it play a huge role in the natural sciences. There is the need for scientific knowledge to be justify with evidence and natural science experiments are often the systematic study or detailed research of something related to science. Knowledge in natural sciences are heavily based on our five sense, smell, taste, touch, sight and sound which contributes to the empirical evidence. Therefore, empirical evidence is needed before the scientist can formulate a law and subsequently a theory in the construction of the knowledges (weebly.com). Furthermore, the certainty of scientific knowledge could be based on the empirical evidences that are presented. For example, physics is very different from mathematics as we cannot make our own method and play around with it (physics.stackexchange.com), it requires theories. This