Posted on 07/13/2012 1:03:03 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot
Psychologist Timothy D. Wilson, a professor at the University of Virginia, expressed resentment in his Times Op-Ed article on Thursday over the fact that most scientists don't consider his field a real science. He casts scientists as condescending bullies:
"Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball.
"There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the 'hard' ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the 'soft' ones (psychology, sociology)."
The dismissive attitude scientists have toward psychologists isn't rooted in snobbery; it's rooted in intellectual frustration. It's rooted in the failure of psychologists to acknowledge that they don't have the same claim on secular truth that the hard sciences do. It's rooted in the tired exasperation that scientists feel when non-scientists try to pretend they are scientists.
That's right. Psychology isn't science.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You still flinging? God things must be boring on your side of the fence.
Again, your post says nothing about your understanding of science. But in aggregate your posts tell everyone all they need to know of the depth of your ignorance.
Again, you lack the framework to understand what science is and isn’t. Leave that for the grown-ups.
I understand climatology, biology and psychology, and you don't understand any of them.
Behavioral psychology is the only psychology that is a science.
That doesn’t mean that patients are reduced conceptually to automatons, or that behavioral conditioning is a good idea.
It just means that general truths can be inductively derived from psychology experiments.
Take, for instance, random reinforcement. It turns pigeons into maniacal key tappers. Apply it to child-raising methods. Voila! Various maladies of the adult.
>>The reason you can’t explain why global warming is not science, is because someone would then point out that all the same arguments apply to your religion of Darwinism. Psychologically, you cannot accept having your unscientific beliefs exposed, so now you are projecting your lack of scientific understanding on to me.<<
You are digging your ignorance hole much, much deeper. It is people like you who can’t even tell the difference between gravity and the Theory of Gravity. For you, it goes downhill from there.
I’ll give you a lifeline here: what is a Scientific Theory? In your own words (I understand you have to use small one). Hint: it isn’t a “grown up guess.”
I’m sure you love to laugh at your own ‘jokes.’
Nobody else does, so I guess you have to.
Chosing between you and Cruise, I’d have to go with Cruise.
It appears most people on this forum think psychology is all about mental illness and mentally ill people. That is not true. Probably half or more of psychologists are involved with research that has nothing to do with mental illness. In fact there are thousands of psychologists who do not even work with humans.
I don't have to BELIEVE in science like you do, because I understand science. You don't bother trying to explain your pseudo-scientific religious beliefs to others because you are too intellectually lazy to understand them yourself." <<
You got freedumb nailed to the wall with that. You must have a window into his soul!
Psychology IS mental illness, is that what you mean?
LOL -
Actually there are psychologists who have been inducted into AAAS and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They’ve never seen patients or dealt with mental illness. They’re not practitioners.
Academic/scientific psychology deals with such diverse topics as math models, neuroimaging, cognitive functioning, decision making. In fact a couple of them won Nobels - but in economics because there is no prize in psychology. (None in math either.)
That psychology is rhetorical is proven in the substance of the pudding itself. Whereas, in science, language is a tool of study, it is both object and subject of psychological study. Language is the matter and form of practical psychology. It begins with labeling, proceeds through commentary, and produces declarations.
It's great to have threads start with really good ones. That's why many of us love this place. The more sophisticated snark can be delicious. Your own offering was FR Puur-fect.
We like jokes. We like to share them, and have them understood, teller and listener alike.
Ironically, jokes themselves, how they "work", touching upon differing subject matter, combining them in ways which can provoke laughter, have subtle powers far beyond the momentary laugh, which long have been exploited. Which powers themselves can be understood from a basis of psychology, as a science...
Leaving one to be able to breezily proclaim, with a straight face and no malice;
Darwinism is also based on a system of classification based on the logical fallacy that animals which appear similar must be related because all species share a common ancestor. Psychology is based on the error that similar behaviors have the same psychological causes. Pychology reduces people to statistics and says that we are all robots responding to stimuli. That's why it is a godless secular religion.
Freud theorized about serious sexual hangups because he was a sick freak! Alfred Adler came up with the inferiority complex because he was crippled. B. F. Skinner wanted to prove that we are all just robots with no free will because he was an atheist and a materialist.
Psychology is the blind man walking barefoot through the glass shop after the earthquake.
ping
“Darwinism is also based on a system of classification based on the logical fallacy that animals which appear similar must be related because all species share a common ancestor”
Then please explain why “New World” vultures and “Old World” vultures appear similar but are not classified as being closely related.
For someone who purports to have studied Biology your statement betrays a fundamental ignorance of even the basics.
It's been that way since at least the 50s.
A somewhat understandable reaction to our sudden emergence into the atomic age and the realization that superior science ended the war in dramatic fashion.
The “new hotness” indeed. Everyone wants in on the act when it is a huge success.
Science is a huge success.
If you say that the theory of evolution does not rest upon the assumption of universal common descent of all living creatures, then you are the one who is ignorant of the basic fundamentals of the theory, not me. Without assuming that all animals are descended from one common ancestor, then there is no reason to assume that any of them have common ancestors.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.