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''What is science and is psychology a science?''

I recently finished my GCSEs and over the summer i have been given bridging work by my sixth form to do (smh). I am very new to A-levels and this subject so I'm still figuring out how to write this essay (it needs to be at least one side of handwritten A4) so need a little help on it. Thanks in advance for any help.

Reply 1

SamuelSingleton

a science has many qualities that distinguish it:
a science must be Objective (means to be observable from a neutral perspective not subjective which involves bias, and be able to collect empirical evidence) is psychology a science in this sense ? Well that depends on the perspective you apply to it, Biological perspective for example uses hard physical evidence... but perspectives such as humanism, cognitive and psychodynamic etc ... Are all studied without neutrality - it's hard to argue that the psychodynamic approach for example which emphasizes retrospective data and dream analysis could be seen as objective evidence

a science must be cumulative this means that new findings mustn't contradict previous findings (WITHIN THE SAME PARADIGM) A paradigm is a set of natural laws which define the way we observe the world (eg theory of relativity, gravity, light etc etc) read up on some sociologists popper and kuhn about scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts for more information on that.. Is psychology a science in this sense ? well no not technically.. because psychology has no real general laws (apart from the study of the brain) ... but because psychology splits into many different perspectives, which each claim a better way to study the brain, there is no real paradigm here.

a science must be Testable this like the first paragraph means it must be able to create a hypothesis and then test this hypothesis against evidence. psychology most definitely is a science in this sense, since theories are always being falsified and improved.

a science must be Empirical (the same points as the first paragraph, i went a little overboard with the detail in that one..) this would say psychology in the most part is not a science, since most of the evidence collected can't really be illustrated. Psychology works on "models" of the brain, not many have been proven true... they just haven't yet been proven false.
there are many ways that contribute to the "empiricalness" of a science...
methods of data collection must be observable (again, most of psychology is not observable, only theoretical).
i could go on and on, but i think that should be enough points for a psychology starters first essay :smile: