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i should maybe have said that p/a constructs and interpretive procedures are falsifiable in a general sense--but in the context of therapeutic practice. the point was kinda crushed into the remark about p/a operating with a different relation of theory to praxis than most straighter sciences.
on efficacy--i think the regimen can work for folk, but from the outset the notion of a "cure" in p/a was not the same as you'd find in a more medicalized discipline. the backbone of the process is a such that it's more about repetition/recognition/shifting one's relations to one's own symptoms than it is about locating some chemical imbalance and administering a drug to alter it. there are a bunch of consequences that follow from this--among them is that a "cure" can be itself transient and a problem later. but i suppose that can be true of any number of things.
as for whether one approach is better than another--i think the question is meaningless. in alleviating suffering, whatever works works, yes? in some situations, chemical treatments are necessary, but they are rarely if ever free-standing. they require the more nebulous therapeutic forms to take. maybe this division repeats the natural/human sciences division.
i find little at stake in all this, myself. genre boundaries are best defended by folk with tofu to fry in the matter. i don't mean by this that everything is everything else, but more that working to establish a clear boundary between a scientific and non-scientific undertaking is not terribly interesting. to my mind, really, it's all philosophy using different formal languages, different procedures operative in different communities each of which has its own internal patterns of legitimation.
another way: i like that bridges don't fall down.
but i don't see anything in the question of whether x or y is a "science"-and even less in whether x or y is a "hard" or "soft" science that impacts on whether bridges do or do not fall down.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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