What kind of argument is this? There are formal arguments about what constitutes a theory, independent of what merriam-webster or wikipedia or you or I say. People who have certainly thought about it more than I have. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of Imre Lakatos or Karl Popper. Roachboy would probably know more about it than I know.

From this link

Okay, let me restate a few things. I've already stated (in this thread I believe) that I feel a good scientist understand that he doesn't understand everything. There is ALWAYS room to question, precisely because you never know when something relevant and substantially different may come up.

HOWEVER, some things are, in fact, fact. We know that gravitation exists. We know not the cause of the effect, but we can verify the effect time and time again. Gravity is a fact. When a mathematical principle is created to stand it up, this becomes scientific law. It is both universally provable, and mathematically describable. You can have something that is mathematically describable, but NOT universally provable (say relativity) and hence a theory is born.

Why is the Theory of Relativity still a theory? Well, let's take it apart. You have general and special relativity, yes? Inside of general relativity, you have time dilation (or a form of it, I think there are more than one) that has been experimentally proven. You also have Rotational Frame Dragging, which has NOT been proven, and experiments run today to study it such as Gravity Probe B. Since it remains unproven in reality, though "proven" mathematically, it is not a fact or law but a theory.

And I'd point out that if you are making ANY kind of assumptions without detailed knowledge of the specifics of the case, then you are not being very scientific. (light-hearted jab)


Ok, several other things that have come to mind:

with regard to the hard vs soft nature of certain branches of science: perhaps a better terminology would be accuracy and/or precision. the "hard" sciences have, over hundreds or even thousands of years, developed a vary high level of precision. the "soft" sciences, because they are still in their infancy, so to speak, do not yet have that same level of precision.

examples: engineering, particularly civil and mechanical, has been studied and practiced for literally thousands of years. social/behavioral sciences, like psychology and psychiatry, have been studied and practiced for maybe a hundred fifty years or so. even medical science has only been studied in a scientific manner for a few hundred years.

as a result of this huge age difference in these various disciplines, there is, naturally, a huge difference in the level of precision that has been attained therein. as was pointed out earlier, there are few, if any, unknown variables in the construction of a building. on the other hand, treating depression (or any other psychiatric/psychologic illnesses) is still somewhat of a guessing game (albeit an educated guess) due to the fact that there are so many unknowns when it come to the mind and brain. this is not a criticism of psychology and the social sciences, but rather a simple statement of (and I hope you'll pardon the use of the term) fact.

of course, there are some who might say that the social sciences will never reach the same level of precision, due to the inherent unpredictability of the human species. the question here is: do we simply not know enough about ourselves to predict human behavior to the same level of precision that we can in predicting how a building will stand up to wind/rain/earthquakes/etc, or are humans simply and inherently unpredictable? I tend to think that there is a certain level of unpredictability to humanity that no science will ever be able overcome.

Why is everyone always so surprised when I have to mention that Psychology's genesis was actually metaphysics and epistemology, which date back to Aristotle. That's about 2400 years ago. That predates the scientific method by about 1400 years. Psychology is not a young science. Neurology is a young science. Quantum physics is a young science.

Leaving that alone, even if psychology was 14 years old that would not make it any more or less viable. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The proof is in every person who has had their mental health improved by people who understand the science of psychology. The proof is in documented successes and improvements of methodology. The proof is in an ever more complete understanding of human mental processes and behavior.

I'd say because that's a stretch. First of all, many philosophies and probably many sciences can draw roots to epistemology. In fact, regardless of organized epistemology, the concept must predate any science or organized knowledge by the very nature of what it encompasses. Saying that psychology's genesis was partly epistemology is like saying that cable TVs genesis was partly rooted in ancient theatre. The line can certainly be drawn, but it's a relatively thin one.

As for metaphysics, well... now you're burning yourself. The word metaphysical translates to afterlife or directly to after physical, as in after or beyond our physical selves. It was generally construed as beginning as a way to think about our ties to the universe and the ultimate "why are we here" questions. In the more modern aspect, metaphysics is often associated with occult dealings and considered pseudo-science. Even in merrier times for metaphysics, it has been fraught with naysayers, many with good arguments about it's limited application or testable conclusions (metaphysics is much more philosophy than science and doesn't adhere particularly well to scientific method). It also often circles back to determinism, which I still contest is outside of the scope of the scientific method.

From my perspective you are now making a statement similar to me saying that astrophysics evolved from astrology, simply because the stars were often the focus. At any rate, I would say that either all science or no science is rooted in epistemology... depending on your perspective.

Perhaps those windmills are yours for the jousting, Quixote?

Okay, I'll get more specific. Psychology as a science (and not philosophy) was basically developed in the Middle East around 930 AD with Al-Fârâbî when he formulated axioms about the causes of social and political behavior of individuals. He also separated out innate behavior from learned behavior. While his methodology was crude even compared to Freud, what he developed over 1000 years ago was much more science than it was philosophical guesswork.

It's interesting that you venerate people as the fathers of psychology who were wrong about nearly everything: Aristotle and Freud.

I'm trying think of parallels in the other sciences, but I think they mostly hold up people who we believe to have been accurate in their thinking.

Why would it be interesting that I venerate the father of modern psychology or possibly the greatest philosopher (maybe even thinker) in history? They had to be wrong first so that someone else could build on them and be right. Then those people are built on, then them. That's science. Besides, they both broke ground in ways that are very rare in scientific development. That earns my eternal veneration.

BTW, Aristotle was also arguably the first actual physicist.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/3494

I think it's interesting because it strikes me as dissimilar to the way that people in other sciences talk about their prominent figures.

I'm not saying that it means anything in particular, just that it is striking.

How would a astro-physicist consider Galileo? How would any physicist consider Newton? How would a biologist consider Darwin? How would a chemist consider Boyle? They're all fathers of science, who made either the first step or the first big step in the right direction. I'm not going to worship them, but their contributions to our progress as a species in understanding the universe is a big deal.

I think that it's strange to call someone the father of a field of study. Freud was a popular figure both in some areas of psychology and in western society generally. However, if I was going to name a father of psychology, I wouldn't name him. I'd probably give that title to Wilhelm Wundt. He started the first psychological laboratory.

I think that people give too much credence to Freud's ideas today. It's beyond veneration. He was important to the history of psychology, but the field has progressed. To apply much of his perspective today is akin to using the Bohr model of the atom to understand chemistry or physics.

EDIT: I suppose you might call Freud the father of clinical psychology, but even in that field, I might choose someone like Charcot.

actually, sapiens, that's a very anglo perspective. in the francophone world, for example, psychoanalysis has a very different position than it does in anglo-world. there's nothing that explains it in principle--it follows from other factors, curious historical/ideological factors. it's yet another of those factoids that makes a mess of stories of progress as a single trajectory.

on the other hand, i think you're probably right about the role wundt played in "founding" psychology as a discipline--but the process was obviously diffuse, both spatially and temporally. it's not like one fine day folk woke up, looked around and saw a new Form floating about the aether than structured their lives as epiphenomena.
"hey...what's that?"
"i dunno, duane: it says 'psychology.'"
"has that always been here?"
"must have been..."

we like to naturalize categories.
naturalizing them seems to make repetition easier.
if you think about it, no discursive space is more amenable to this naturalizing of categories than is meta-discussions about the status of science.
well, maybe there are others more amenable.
if i could count them, i'd be making a "hard" claim.
but i'm a teddy bear.

I was hesitant to name a "father" of a field, but Wundt often gets stamped with that label.

What aspect of my statement was anglo-centric? I know that psychoanalysis is still popular in many fields in America. I imagine it is elsewhere as well. Many people I know in film studies use it. From my experience, it doesn't seem to generate testable hypotheses or lead to effective treatment methods.

it's not a big deal--but in france, psychoanalysis occupies a very different institutional space than it does in anglo-world. i could trot out a little history of it, but i'm not sure how interesting it is. anyway, the anglo-debate about psychoanalysis came down to a simple question--whether a theoretical viewpoint that directed analytic attention to the unconscious could generate falsifiable propositions. from one viewpoint, the "object" is problematic a priori if repeatability of results (which is the basis for falsifiability) is a defining criterion which separates "science" from its others--but another direction can use the same argument to pose questions about the limitations imposed on understanding of the world through this narrow understanding of "science"

the curious thing is that freud (obviously) developed and relied upon symptomologies and a particular range of interpretive frameworks to orient psychoanalytic practice---these frames would be tested through their usage--so they are in a sense falsifiable on their own terms. but this apparently violates assumptions about the relation of theory to practice in general. this seems weak, however---the stronger (and more problematic) argument then is that a focus on the unconscious a priori means that you aren't "doing science". this is an anglo-debate almost entirely--like there's some kind of anxiety about philosophical complexity--so "science" becomes about the reduction of complexity, at least at the level of definition of analytic object.

in france, this debate didn't happen in anything like the same way.

basically, the boundary between the natural and human sciences is not defended with the same neurotic fervor as you find in anglo-world.
psychoanalysis can yield effective treatment regimens within certain contexts and potentially important insights into how cognition operates, how perception operates--by enabling something to be understood about the nature of association--which is the basic mechanism for making meaning.

if you wanted to explain why this divergence happened, and in messageboard form had to point to something because you can do it quickly more than because it's accurate, i'd say the fact that philosophy occupies a very different institutional space within the french educational system has certain effects, and the relative openness at the natural/human sciences boundary may be one of them. this without idealizing one context over the other, btw. they diverge, that's all.
differences follow.
there we are.

so from this kind of viewpoint (one informed by both debates, i suppose) the anglo-version of "science" explains quite alot about the development of that particular region of psychology, what it can do and what it can't do, the kind of questions it can address and the kinds of questions it won't address.

on a related note, i'm not so sure about the dismissal of psychoanalysis out of hand--but i'm also not so sure about its embrace either. i think it's one of a wide range of ways of thinking about being-in-the-world--like any it's differentially useful.

blech. messageboards and the need for shortness.

Roachboy: Generally, I don't have a problem with the investigation of unconscious processes. I do agree that in the history of psych in America, many psychologists looked at investigations of the unconscious with disdain (at least until the 60s and 70s). I don't understand how psychoanalysis can be demonstrated falsifiable on its own terms. Are you referring to therapeutic outcomes? I haven't seen much evidence that psychoanalysis yields effective treatment regimens.

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.

Absolutely. I just question whether it works.


For me, the decision if there is one isn't between psychoanalysis and a pill, but between psychoanalysis, the many other forms of treatment, and a pill.

I'm using the term loosely. I'm also using the best known names instead of the more apt names.

sapiens: in the states, psychoanalysis is amongst a range of therapeutic options that you, as consumer driven by whatever to see in therapy a way to maybe make your life easier to have, can choose or not choose. there are lots of types of p/a to choose from. were you in france, you'd have a different, more extensive set of alternatives, a different sense of what was entailed, a different sense of relative success rates ,etc. these things--institutionalization/relative rates of success--are circular.

personally, i am agnostic about it as a therapeutic framework.

i'm way less agnostic about the present state of affairs that seems to obtain in the land of hmo-covered treatments, though, in the context of which it seems almost inevitable (and if my cadre of friends/acquaintances is any indication, inevitable) that meds are substituted for the "messier" track of therapy itself. for cost-effective reasons no doubt--but this also seems to me a way in which the implications of this "hard"/"soft" science nonsense surfaces, generally without any upside for the folk whose treatment is impacted by it.

I feel as if I have died and fallen into hell. There are some really poor descriptions of science in this thread. There's too many for me to respond to all of them but most have been perpetrated by xepherys so I'll respond to some of his claims...

Why do you insist on running to a dictionary as an authority on meaning? Admittedly, I do the same when engaged in colloquial language but it's not a good idea to do so when talking about specific fields, like science. Every organized endeavor has its own jargon and science is no exception. Compare the dictionary meaning of displacement with the physical definition, for an example...

Are you a creationist now?!

First of all, theories will never ever "graduate" to fact. That's not how the term is used. Do you think we doubt that atoms exist? If not then why is it still called the atomic theory? Theories don't even "graduate" to laws. Do you really think that we ever referred to Newton's theories of motion? ...or the theories of thermodynamics? That's not how the term is used...

This leads to my second point, which is that scientific "laws" aren't really any different than scientific "theories." Like in English, synonyms exist in science and that's what these two words are. The use of the term "law" in science came into vogue at a time when science (particularly physics) was starting to mature rapidly but wasn't, itself, well studied. Back then, scientists had romantic notions of "unlocking the secrets of the Universe!" They felt that they were discovering absolute and final truths about how the Universe worked and so some principles seemed to warrant the title of law.

Of course, science has matured quite a bit since then and is now a little more formalized. The three laws of thermodynamics didn't really make sense without the zeroeth law, Newton's second law of motion isn't true in the general sense and the first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, can be temporarily violated. Hell, the first law of thermodynamics is just a special case of conservation of energy so how is it really so fundamental?

Scientific laws tend to be more axiomatic and descriptive than scientific theories but what is labelled a "law" or a "theory" is mostly aesthetic. They are both tentative descriptions of how we think the Universe works and they are really no different from each other.

In science, "fact" is synonymous with "observation."

Again, theories will never be "graduated" to "laws" or "facts", regardless of how much evidence or apparent truth is behind them. The terms are simply not used that way. By the way, there is no part of special relativity that hasn't been demonstrable. In every way, it appears to be true...

Actually, the word "metaphysics" translates literally to "after physics," denoting Aristotle's work that came after his work on physics. The word is currently used as you describe it but your etymology was simply wrong...


Actually, I'm surprised I didn't have more to say. There's probably much more to comment on but this thread was so painful to read that I don't think I can bear to read it over again...

We discussed this as a case study in one of my engineering courses. The problem with the natural frequency of the bridge is that the engineers at the time just didn't know enough about the aerodynamic effects on the bridge and thus didn't think to design for it. After the bridge failed, the engineering community became more aware and started do things like put bridge designs through wind tunnels.

That is one of the drawbacks of discovery: sometimes you learn things by accident and mistake.

Thank you! I mostly lurk, but as a scientist reading what people have been saying was making me want to tear my hair out! I agree 100% with what you said, and you sir, saved me a lot of time for not having to write that up on my own!

My feelings exactly. It drives me nuts the number of people that do not understand that scientific process. Science is not a dogma, its a method. Scientics do not just arbitrarily dismiss something as "junk science." Something is tested by the scientific method. It either holds up or it doesn't.

by the way, Ghost Hunters doesn't hold up.