Recently, in the search for unity in psychology (starting here) we’ve hit quite a lot of naysayers: psychology is already unified, it doesn’t need unification, it’s impossible, it’s pointless, it’s missing the point. Today, before I completely give up hope, the case for the defence (or is it prosecution?). In either case, a few hardy souls are happy to stand up and say, yes, things could be different, and perhaps it could even be better. Good for them.
A philosophical response to Henriques comes from Jack Presbury who wants to give the Tree of Knowledge a good shake. This article is superficially attractive not least because he states:
“The Big Bang and the dinosaurs may have been here long before we humans were, but if we hadn’t come along, they might as well have not existed, because nobody would know about it. The basic epistemological issue is that nothing could be known if we humans did not have the capacity to know. Everything is psychology. It is psychology – not physics – that is the mother of all sciences.”
What could be a more appealing statement to a psychologist? It’s the physicists who should have psychology envy!
Continue reading “Unity: Psychology is the Mother of All Sciences”
More criticism of attempts to unify psychology which, as you will see, don’t much impress me. Lilienfeld (2004) responds to Henriques’ article by asking whether attempting to define psychology is worth the trouble. Lilienfeld (2004) argues that there is little utility in defining psychology more precisely – after all biologists (apparently) have some difficulty in defining what life is. The word ‘psychology’ is inherently ‘fuzzy’ and unity would simply encourage ‘turf-wars’ between psychology and sociology, ethology and so on.
When I started my first psychology course I couldn’t understand the separation between the different subjects, or disciplines, in psychology. Developmental psychologists aren’t that much different from cognitive psychologists – they both study mental events and processes – but one almost never refers to the other. Why?
Continue reading “Unity in Psychology: The Search Starts Here”
Thank Kihlstrom (2004), some clarity. I’ve just been reading his response to Henriques’ proposals for a unified psychology, and the man talks a lot of sense. Although he’s not totally dismissive of what Henriques’ has to say, he thinks that psychology has, in effect, already been unified, to the extent that it’s possible, by the cognitive revolution.
London is currently the centre of world attention as security forces claim to have foiled a terrorist plot to bomb a number of civilian aircraft. In response the media has gone into special-event overdrive which usually involves: a) endless repetition of the same sketchy information and b) pointless graphics attempting to cover up for a lack of cold hard facts. Not that I’ve been watching or reading any of it – I don’t see the point.
Continuing my investigation of unity in psychology – whether it’s possible, why it’s not there already, what can be done about it – I’ve discovered another supporter of the institutional/organisational hypothesis of psychology’s woes.
Katzko (2004) points out that psychology is a ‘federation of sub-disciplines’ and that diversity is not problem, instead it is psychology’s disorganisation that needs addressing. Katzko (2002) argues that this type of disorganisation is actually created by a discontent about the methodological basis of psychology.
A recent request by a researcher to help generate participants got me thinking about the rise of psychological research over the internet. The web can be tantalising for psychological researchers – access to millions upon millions of participants, reaching beyond the standard undergraduate pool to specialised groups, cheap online implementation and the resulting data already in electronic form. All these are acknowledged advantages but how many investigators are aware of some of the major pitfalls of online research? Birnbaum (2004) examines some of the problems researchers will face.
Continue reading “Rise of Psychological Research on the Internet”
The greatest enemy of unity, or even just some kind of organisation in psychology, is complacency. Hayes (2004) argues that Henriques’ attempt to (re)define psychology is essentially redundant as it won’t result in any practical benefits. Hayes points to how his own house (behaviour analysis) is apparently in good theoretical order and has no need of these over-arching meta-theories. Further he wants to say that there is no way of knowing what benefits will accrue from developing a unified view of psychology – apparently coherence has no proven benefit.
For me it’s very difficult to understand what psychology is really about and what it consists of. Everyone seems to have different ideas which are often mutually exclusive. Not only that but psychologists seem to make little effort to bridge the enormous gaps that have been obvious for decades, or even centuries. Formally, psychology is a disaster zone.
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