IngentaConnect Psychology of ScienceTheology of Science: Reaching Out or Narrowi...

Abstract:

Formalizing a “psychology of science” today will constrain intellectual freedom in ways more likely stultifying than liberating. We should be more improvisational in seeking ideas from academic psychology to develop a more comprehensive purview. I suggest that a psychology of science should look at systematic theology and empirical theology. Liberal theologians have long experience trying to distill from religion those structural aspects that affirm openness in a search for truth. Science, as well as religion, has its myths and rituals, but theologians are more experienced than scientists at a large mythohistorical scale. There are distortions in the extreme degree to which psychological science has traditionally emphasized empiricism, positivism, hypothesis testing, and falsifiability. I argue for less critical reduction and more creative augmentation. This could include looking outside academia at cognitive competencies of people in trades. Exaggerated parsimony is an old story. This is illustrated by the opposition to David Hartley's 1749 theory of neural oscillations. There is an inexorable “margin of uncertainty” where scientific prediction and control can never outstrip the new uses to which human beings put ideas. Facts and values interact in this margin; theology has long made a home there, but scientists sometimes have been excessive in rejecting the “naturalistic fallacy.” There is also often a degree of disingenuousness in psychology's reluctance to take subjective phenomena seriously; here there may be lessons in how empirical theology has handled subjectivity, as well as in taking an honest look at the way much of the methodology of experimental psychology incorporates subjective assessments. Feist's book is a start, but these things need more thought before codifying a psychology of science.

Keywords: analogy; behaviorism; cognitive; consciousness; conservatism; creativity; dogma; falsifiability; freedom; humanistic; intellectual history; parsimony; philosophy; progress; reductionism; scale; scientific languages; working memory capacity

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2007.00858.x

Affiliations: 1: Professor in the Department of Psychology, Box E1, Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045-2399;, Email: glassman@lakeforest.edu.

The full text electronic article is available for purchase. You will be able to download the full text electronic article after payment.

$41.89 plus tax Refund Policy

Psychology of Science/Theology of Science: Reaching Out or Narrowing?