Is Psychology a Science recap
Last time, we discussed what “science” is, and then the different understandings of what “psychology” is. We recognized that science is not truth but constantly evolving models of truth. We acknowledged that psychology involves so many complex factors at many levels that its predictions are more akin to meteorology than to chemistry. We also discussed repeated differences among psychologists on just what psychology is. And that these debates are not poor science, but the proper application of science by developing different models and testing them together to improve, augment, and hopefully merge models into ones that fit humanity better.
And now, to confuse you.
Psychology = Physics
Bear with me on this one. When I look at the state of psychological science alongside my grounding in other sciences, I believe psychology right now is in a similar place to where physics was in the 19th century. And not only that. I think we will come to understand physics and psychology along the same multidimensional continuum, along with all sciences. The sciences are different faces of the same, many-sided die.
By the late 19th century, physicists felt confident in what they knew. They had a grounded image of the universe, with a calculus to quantify the mechanics of movement and force, and equations for electromagnetism that were revolutionizing technology. Some physicists were wondering whether they had just about figured out how the universe works. They dismissed some minor kinks that didn’t fit. It took the next round of pioneers, like Bohr and Einstein, to shake physics out of this delusion and into the quantum, relativistic world. Physicists now ask questions no one 150 years ago would have dreamt of.
What does that have to do with psychology?
When Carl Sagan famously said, “We are all star-stuff” in his Cosmos series, this was not just beautiful metaphor: this was literal truth (to a scientific approximation). We are made the same. Every atom in us shares properties with planets and stars and asteroids and space dust. Perhaps even dark matter, whatever that turns out to be. Not only do we matter; we are matter. Psychologists know these relativistic transcendent properties: we depend on human connection to transform each other in ways we have never been properly able to quantify. Psychodynamic object relations tries to grapple with this, but the principles remain mechanistic. And behavioral learning theory is mechanical as well. You could perhaps say that object relations theory is like Maxwell’s equations, and that learning theory is like Newtonian mechanics.
And anyone who’s been in a long-term romantic relationship (or perhaps, a dramatic short-term one) has a first-hand experience of psychological quantum entanglement.
Not only do we matter; we are matter.
Sometimes it feels tantalizingly close. Take research into acceptance processes, where we understand ourselves more flexibly, and intersectional theory, where we understand our interactions more complexly. These feel almost like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: we are each this and that. When we try to define ourselves in one way, we lose sight of the others. We are nothing, something, and everything when taken across time and context. I am still waiting for psychology’s Einstein to build a Theory of Psycho-relativity that brings psychology into scientific maturity. I believe this comparison is not just metaphor: you and I are quantum beings.
While we wait, psychology still has a lot of science to share.