Psychology is about as old as my great-grandparents, experimenting with their emotions, upsetting their mothers and coming of age in the years preceding the turn of the 20th century. But whereas my great grandparents have long matured (and deceased), the field of psychology is neither mature nor deceased. One might accredit this to the insatiable drive to uncover the human mind, coupled with its inherent difficulty.
“Psychology Comes To Halt As Weary Researchers Say The Mind Cannot Possibly Study Itself,” reads one headline of a particularly reputable news source. Clue: it rhymes with "The Funyun."
As satirical as the headline is, it’s actually not too far from the truth. The mind can’t really study itself ... at least not scientifically, and at least not yet. Psychology exists on an ambiguous intersection between science and the humanities, and it is really a “pre-scientific” field. Or rather, to put it in perspective with other sciences (physics, astronomy, biology, etc.), it’s really “pre-Galileo.”
Dating back to the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, during which time Galileo Galilei transformed observational astronomy and physics, the “birth of modern science” is nearly 400 years old, making science the older, bully sibling of psychology. “Academia likes me better!” it might taunt, and with some truth, but what would an American Barnes & Noble be without a psychology and self-help section?
Although psychology adheres to the scientific method as it attempts to organize behaviors and the mind, skepticism, data, observations and experiments aren’t quite sufficient to categorize something as a science. Components of “scientific thinking” can be applied to any subject (the “science of criminology,” for instance), but a scientific perspective doesn’t make a scientific subject.
Instead, science constitutes a systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world. Science boils down to universal laws that explain the physical and natural world. Psychology doesn’t, yet. This isn’t to say, however, that psychology will never be worth more than a self help section -- it is already.
The realm of psychology has a lot to teach us about our own species. Consider Steven Pinker, a linguist, evolutionary psychologist and academic celebrity who recently published a rather lengthy book entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature." In this book he explains that, all things considered, the human species has become increasingly civilized and non-violent throughout the 50,000 years of its existence. Although a controversial study not without criticism, he cites the number of state-based armed conflicts, the rate of deaths in genocide, the global homicide rate, the U.S. execution rate and the rate of forcible rape as figures that have all shown steady decline.
Behavioral science statistics are like measuring instruments, however; homicide statistics may give the homicide “temperature” in a particular place at a particular time, but to fully understand what these statistics mean, knowledge of neural circuits and other complexities (of molecules and of heat, to extend the analogy) is necessary. Pinker uses behavior to study humanity’s global trends. This might be akin to explaining climate change in terms of steady and exorbitant carbon dioxide emissions. It’s right, basically, but is it really scientific if you’re not talking about the ozone, about the atmosphere or about the molecular consequences of carbon dioxide emissions? Noting interactions is not the same as illustrating causations.
Noam Chomsky, public intellectual number one, makes a similar point: “Any sort of principles that enable you to construct a rich theory on the basis of limited data, also is likely to limit the class of possible theories that you can attain,” he says. In other words, the deeper the wells of information, the more refreshing the theories will be. Psychology hasn’t by a long shot struck the bottom of its well, but it’s making progress.
