Is psychology a science?

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Is psych. concidered a as Maths are, or is there another definition? Some peole do not recognise it as because its finds cannot be proven in the same manner as the Math sciences...Help!!

-- Areti LaFleur (alafleur@otenet.gr), May 10, 2002

Answers

Unlike most other European languages, in English the term "science" is now usually (though not absolutely) reserved for the empirical sciences. Thus, math is not usually considered to be a science, being a priori rather than empirical. One occasionally still hears philosophers refer to logic as the "science of inference" but this is fairly archaic usage now. Some areas of psychology are undoubtedly scientific -- sensation and perception, for instance. Other areas aspire to be scientific, but there remains much debate -- some approaches to personality for instance. Still other areas do not even aspire to be scientific (in the traditional sense of natural sciences anyway), such as some approaches to psychotherapy. The terms "social science" or "human science" are sometimes used to denote areas that claim to be as rigorous as natural sciences, but that use different methods because their subject matters are considered to categorically different from those of the natural sciences (for instance, that they are too esentially shot through with human meanings and significances to be effectively studied in an objective fashion).

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), May 10, 2002.

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