Psychology: science or not?

[ed_saifa]

Blow me away with your wisdom!

[iamdan08]

The investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced by such investigation.  Science makes use of the scientific method, which includes the careful observation of natural phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis, the conducting of one or more experiments to test the hypothesis, and the drawing of a conclusion that confirms or modifies the hypothesis

That is the dictionaries definition of science, so i suppose some areas of psychology can be classified as a science.

[Eriny]

I don't think it really matters, but it is a science. There's a very disciplined scientific method in psychology.

[Glockmeister]

You could argue that, by definition it is as psychology (not physchology.. please) is the scientific study of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

The more interesting question is; what a science? And how do you differentiate between science and pseudoscience.

[Collin Li]

The quantitative method in psychology (academic) is scientific. The clinical practice of it may not be.

[jess3254]

It's interesting, because in the IB, psychology is classified as a humanities, and in VCE it's a science. Our first topic of IB was 'why psychology is a humanities', and in VCE, the the first thing my teacher explained was why psychology is a science. It depends how you approach it, and what area.

I think it's a combination of humanities and science.

[Glockmeister]

Just for my curiosity jess, why did the IB people say psych is a humanities?

[jess3254]

Well, in the IB, we learnt about "theories" and "percpectives". The course was structured like this:

-The biological theory (we learnt about the brain and nervous system within this topic - probably the only 'sciencey' thing we did in psych)
-The learning theory
-The cognitive perspective
-The humanistic perspective

As well as two school chosen 'options' which for us were:
The psychology of dysfunctional behaviour
Cultural psychology

IB focused on 'beliefs', and we were told that nothing was 'certain' in psychology. We looked at different views on behaviour, and wrote various essays comparing and contrasting different theories. In these essays, we were allowed to interpret these beliefs and put forward our personal views. We did a lot of 'history' of psychology. They stress that it's a relatively new area in comparison to other fields, and that it's a subject comprised of one thing and one thing only: theories.
The IB really doesn't like you calling psychology a science.

P.S. Glockmeister, I noticed you go to Haileybury. Have they just introduced the IB? Or was that another school...

[Eriny]

But you can argue (and I do) that all science is theoretical. What is considered 'scientific fact' of the day tends to reflect society more than objective reality.

[Glockmeister]

Well, in the IB, we learnt about "theories" and "percpectives". The course was structured like this:

-The biological theory (we learnt about the brain and nervous system within this topic - probably the only 'sciencey' thing we did in psych)
-The learning theory
-The cognitive perspective
-The humanistic perspective

As well as two school chosen 'options' which for us were:
The psychology of dysfunctional behaviour
Cultural psychology

IB focused on 'beliefs', and we were told that nothing was 'certain' in psychology. We looked at different views on behaviour, and wrote various essays comparing and contrasting different theories. In these essays, we were allowed to interpret these beliefs and put forward our personal views. We did a lot of 'history' of psychology. They stress that it's a relatively new area in comparison to other fields, and that it's a subject comprised of one thing and one thing only: theories.
The IB really doesn't like you calling psychology a science.

P.S. Glockmeister, I noticed you go to Haileybury. Have they just introduced the IB? Or was that another school...

Yeah, last year actually. Opened out with like >8 students, despite the heavy pitching from staff.

In regards to the topic though, that's pretty interesting actually. It's quite funny, cause the VCE has a whole Area of Study in Unit 1 about the 'Scientific Basis of Psychology', and I would imagine that how they pitch it at uni (is that right erin?).

[Eriny]

In regards to the topic though, that's pretty interesting actually. It's quite funny, cause the VCE has a whole Area of Study in Unit 1 about the 'Scientific Basis of Psychology', and I would imagine that how they pitch it at uni (is that right erin?).

Yeah, it's definitely pitched that way. But it's kind of hard not to be when the topics we're doing are biological basis of behaviour and research methods. I think we get in to cognitive stuff later on, but still probably from a scientific standpoint. It's funny though, because they do another first year subject which is pretty much psychology-lite, they say it's more geared to humanities students than the subject I'm doing.

[bubble sunglasses]

 I saw Visual Perception was on the VCE Psych syllabus; an area which obviously overlaps with physiology and philosophy

[Mao]

a study is only a science (as argued by the philosopher Popper) if it can be falsified.
That is, theories are established based on empirical evidence, and any case against it blows it apart.

A classic example of falsification is classical electromagnetism and the Ultraviolet catastrophe. following this, classical EM theories were completely scrapped and Quantum Mechanics emerged.

according to my philosophy teacher, psychology does not satisfy this "falsifiability" condition. when evidence is shown against contemporary theories, these theories adapt to include these anomalies, rather than to create a new theory that explains these anomalies, much like the rather controversial "Creationism" claiming to a science.

but then Kuhn (another philosopher) argued that scientist also follow their own predefined paradigm, that non-falsifiability doesnt really qualify something to be a non-science, an example is Chemistry before oxygen was discovered, when fire was believed to be caused by this thing called "phlogiston", but when the ashes were weighed it was found to have a higher mass (we now know thats oxides), so the phlogiston theory was changed to accomodate this by saying "in some cases phlogiston can have negative mass". Yet no one disputed that at this stage, chemistry is not a science.

In this realm of philosophy, there are no answers... =S

[Rietie]

I thought psychology was just the easy science that girls do (which is why I am annoyed our school doesn't offer it   )

[Nick]

I thought psychology was just the easy science that girls do (which is why I am annoyed our school doesn't offer it   )

Your school doesn't offer it? That's pretty bizarre considering psych is one of the most popular VCE subjects. Over 15 000 students completed psych last year.