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Originally Posted by Jinn
Therein lies your error; not all psychologists are therapists. Research pyschologists absolutely follow the scientific method, and endure just as much rigor as a theoretical physicist. Therapy is applied psychology, and focuses on using sound psychological theory to solve contemporary problems.
Applied physicists do the same thing.
In my field, there are computer scientists and there are programmers. Computer scientists draw from the science of Mathematics, Formal Logic and Communication Theory and use the scientific method to arrive at new, more efficient algorithms. Progammers, on the other hand, are applied scientists, and use their knowledge of the science to solve problems. They're no more scientists than applied physicists or therapists.
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I appreciate the distinctions you made above. Thanks.
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Originally Posted by Nisses
Nice way of addressing his arguments there
Actually, you're providing an EXCELLENT example of what Stevie667 was talking about
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Will: It does sound a bit like an
argument from authority.
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I'm heading back to the question I posted earlier:
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Originally Posted by sapiens
This thread is about scientific thinking. How do people define scientific thinking or the scientific method?
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I think that some of the fundamental ingredients of the scientific method are
1. Determinism: The universe is orderly. Events have meaningful, systematic causes
2. Empiricism: Events in the world can be best understood via observation.
3. Falsifiability: A good account of an event should generate testable hypotheses.
A bit of an aside: A theory is not “just a theory” or “simply a theory”. It’s not a “best guess”. Theories are tools. Tools employed by scientists to understand their domain of inquiry. A good theory accounts for and organizes existing knowledge and generates testable hypotheses and predictions, leading us to new domains of knowledge.
The wiki explanation of the
scientific method doesn’t do to bad of a job describing the scientific method, though I’ve only skimmed it.
Given the above, scientific virtue or merit of a domain of knowledge is not determined by how many years required to get a degree in the field or even the content of the particular field, but rather the extent to which the scientific method was employed in discovering that knowledge.