Is psychology or is it not a science?

Basically, there are three possible answers given throughout the story.

Hello friends!

During psychology college, and afterwards, we always ended up dealing with the following question: “Is psychology a science or not?” In this text, I try to show the possible answers that have already been given by psychologists around the world to the question. It is an introductory text, so that everyone can understand. The purpose is to start the discussion.

Note: if you have more knowledge of epistemology or if you have questions about the text, post your comment below and contribute.

Is psychology or is it not a science?

A constant concern in the early history of psychology was with scientificity. That is, in separating the discipline from the other disciplines previously established as science (physics, chemistry, biology, sociology), both with the objective of separation and to legitimize the study and creation of separate departments in universities.

From the beginning, psychology has been criticized for not being a science. Perhaps it was something like philosophy, but not a science. To begin with, then, we have to have a concept of what science is, right? If not, we can talk and talk and talk and we won’t start from a definition.

Science, scientia, science, Wissenschaft… are words that are closely related to knowledge. In the same way that we can ask someone: “Are you aware that gravity exists and you can fall from there?” we might ask, “you know, do you have the knowledge that gravity exists and you can fall from there?”

Therefore, science means knowledge. The difference between everyday knowledge, common sense, and scientific knowledge (in the sense that we will deal with here in the text, the modern sense) is that scientific knowledge has a method, a way to be built. There is the scientific methodology, based on hypotheses and empirical tests.

It’s funny because scientific knowledge ended up bringing many technologies, useful applications, to our lives. And given the baggage of knowledge built up to date, science has proven to be an effective path, which is why more recent disciplines such as psychology seek to either use confirmed knowledge or imitate methods to achieve the same results. I say it’s funny because, ultimately, science doesn’t claim to be the final, ultimate truth.

From the model of a hypothesis, the possibility of replication by other researchers, and experimentation, it is often the case that knowledge taken as an absolute truth yesterday will not be tomorrow. So it’s silly to have this kind of attitude that science is the ultimate authority. A self-respecting scientist will always have more doubt and curiosity than the pretense of absolute knowledge.

But, anyway, there is this desire to be science, to be science hard, how do you say. In this way, throughout history, we have 3 possible answers to the question whether psychology is or is not a science:

1) Psychology is a science

In view of what was said above, psychology is considered a science when it uses the methods of other sciences, that is, when it establishes hypotheses and tests them in the laboratory. It may seek to use methods close to biology or systems that have been developed in the field of medicine, for example with control groups, statistics, averages, etc.

For this reason, Wundt is known as the father of modern psychology because he was the first researcher to create a psychology laboratory, in 1879. Unfortunately, Wundt’s works were never translated into Portuguese. Some of them have been translated into English, but anyone who wants to delve into everything written by him will have to study the original in German.

After Wundt, many other researchers created laboratories to research the psyche. Interestingly, for those who don’t know, psyche (psychology is psyche+logy) means soul in Greek. The difference between Wundt and other researchers will be not only what will be studied in the psyche, but also the way of studying this content.

The movement within psychology that became known as behavioral psychology saw that it was too problematic to study the soul, the psyche, the mind. Therefore, he reformulated the object of study of psychology from the psyche to behavior. The behavior of a subject (often called an organism to approximate biology) is the unit of study. After all, it is very difficult to study the mind – what is the mind? – but it is possible to study what an organism does, when it does it and how it does it.

The problem is that one type of behavior that is most important to us human beings is private or covert behavior, that is, what we think and feel. Therefore, the question continues until the present day about how to study scientifically what a person thinks and feels, if he does not say what he is thinking or feeling.

(Observation: with the advent of neurosciences and technologies that make it possible to study the brain at work, this problem is being worked on in a different way, with very interesting possibilities).

But, anyway, in the eyes of other sciences, behavioral psychology is a science because it uses the same principles established around the world for scientific research. Cognitive psychology, and other resulting strands, such as Mindfulness Psychology, are also generally included as scientific perspectives.

2) Psychology is another kind of science

Since Dewey – and even before – we have the idea that there are different types of science according to the object of study. It makes sense because studying an inanimate object is different from studying an “animate” object (anima, in animate and inanimate comes from cheer up, in Latin, meaning soul, like psyche in Greek).

Thus, several catalogs emerged, for example:

Naturwissenschaften – natural sciences

Geistwissenchaften – human sciences (literally, sciences of the spirit).

Around here, it is common to divide the faculties into:

– Colleges of exact sciences;

– Biological faculties;

– Faculties of humanities.

Other aspects of psychology, such as phenomenological-existential psychology, argue that psychology is indeed a science, but not a science like the natural sciences or the biological or exact sciences. Psychology is a science of understanding, that is, it uses other methods – equally systematic – to study the complexity that is the human being.

To begin with, a human being is very different from an inanimate object or an animal in that it has language. Language is something that totally differs from these other possible objects of study and, therefore, requires another methodology that contemplates it.

3) Psychology is not a science

Another influential strand in psychology is psychoanalysis, which, although not identified with psychology, has given rise to various theories and research. Thus, we can speak of psychodynamic psychology as one that incorporates psychoanalysis as an important foundation.

If we read Freud, we will see that he also sought to legitimize psychoanalysis as a science. For those who don’t know, Freud graduated in medicine and specialized in neurology. And, given this desire of the father of psychoanalysis, there was a long debate in 20th century epistemology whether or not psychoanalysis could be considered a science. The stir lies in the fact that the knowledge acquired by psychoanalysts was not acquired in a controlled environment, such as a laboratory, and the research methodology does not follow the standards of a control group, statistics, and other requirements to fit in with science.

The method is much more connected to what we can call a case study and, therefore, there is a criticism if it can be generalized. In addition, we can criticize the concepts. Is there such a thing as the unconscious? Or is the unconscious just another unproven word for mind or psyche?

Well, psychoanalysts like Jacques Lacan, more aware of the problems of epistemology, even initially tried to legitimize this too, but later realized that it is impossible to create a science of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis would be much closer to ethics. This means that psychoanalysis is inserted in a type of question that involves a subject and, therefore, works with a problem that is an ethical problem and not a scientific one.

Two examples will help us understand.

A psychologist, based on scientific methodologies, can do a survey with 200 schizophrenics. If the clinical psychologist were to seek to help one of these, he would be working with an individual who is unique. Although he has symptoms similar to the other 199, he will not be identical to them. So there is the problem of the individual and the group, the particular and the general.

When psychoanalysts affirm that psychoanalysis (and psychology by derivation) is in the field of ethics, what is being affirmed is that questions of practice will always involve ethical questions. To be clear, let’s separate what is ethics and what is science, with a brilliant example from a dear professor:

– Science: drinking soda causes cellulite;

– Ethics: should I or should I not drink soda?

In other words, science can bring structured knowledge that seeks to be true (until proven otherwise). However, in everyday life, in practice, the use we are going to make of knowledge is always ethical. Ethics can be defined as the search for an answer to what is best to do. Is it better or not better to drink soda? In clinical practice, for example, is it better or not better to take this medicine? Is it better to choose X or is it better to choose Y?

Therefore, the Federal Council of Psychology has a Professional Ethics, with norms of what is best to do (and not a manual with techniques and axioms).

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, the purpose of this text is to be introductory and to show some perspectives for the question whether psychology is or is not a science. To the extent that there are psychologies, in the plural, and not a single psychology, the problem ends up being even greater, because we would have to ask if each of these psychologies it is or is not a science.

I tried to show the three main perspectives:

– Psychology is a science

– Psychology is another kind of science

– Psychology is not a science (it is ethics).

Also Read – Thought Forms to Study Thinking in Psychology

Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below!

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