Its my 3rd year of psychology, and ever since I’ve started studying psychology I’ve always seen psychology as a science not an art (although it is offered through arts faculty. And now psychology is under the department of medicine etc.)
So for 3 years I felt quite comfortable thinking about psychology as a science. We do sciencey things like experiements, critical reviewing of past articles, statistics etc
But now I’m being asked “Is psychology a science? If so what kind of science should it be?”
Most people will think ok I’ll define what science is and work from there. And then the second thought is to go to wikipedia and get the definition. But psy is so tight! References have to be from articles, though they allow electronic non article references … but its frowned upon…
By third year they “expect more of us” so I’m going to assume that using a dictionary is below expectations. But is someone going to actually write an article about what is science? Isn’t science something that everyone generally has an idea of, and if we are unsure we just check the dictionary for it??
And to make it more complicated there are different types of science:rationalism, logical positivism, falsificatonism and then the hardcore science… physics.
As mentioned earlier “We do sciencey things like experiements, critical reviewing of past articles, statistics etc”
So I thought that science would be logical positivism (which is like the evolved version of empiricalism which is basicly abotu experimentation). But where do these experiments start? From reading past experiment… but where does it all start from? At the very begining?!
Observation? Or just plain thinking?
4 responses so far ↓
Jack // August 17, 2006 at 9:18 am
That. Is the smartest thing I’ve ever heard you say.
thestickfigureartist // August 17, 2006 at 9:56 am
Hahaha thats sweet Jack. But that doesn’t really help me…
*huggles* anyway
Jack // August 17, 2006 at 10:37 am
I wasn’t trying to be sweet. I was trying to be mean and condescending.
Answer to your question:
Going back to the very origins of the word science and all the motivations behind the definition would be beyond the scope of a 3rd year’s essay, I believe. Something to think about for your honours year though.
I would find the slippery way out. Establish your contention (i.e. Psych = science) and then contrast it with existing things that are undoubtedly scientific. For instance, lab coats are scientific. If psychologists are asked to wear lab coats at work; they are scientists.
karan // August 17, 2006 at 11:21 pm
That literally is something I never expected; chicky explaining concepts to me! I don’t mean it in a mean/condescending way, more of a surprised & pleased way
so I guess you’re asking how far back it goes – but that comes back to what psychology is, fundamentally. My outsider/simplistic view is that it’s the study of behaviour & methods of thinking. At the very beginning, it would have started from people looking at other people and thinking “now why did he go and do that, I wonder?” You can’t really consider in the abstract sense the behaviours of people/animals because they’re not abstract concepts like physics or chemistry are on their most detailed levels…
So I’d probably say yes it is a science, mainly because there’s little else it could be…. right?