All of the Sciences ultimately run on consensus, . Psychology is tricky because there’s a lot of variety but same is true for Theoretical physics: so many competing theories in each of them, methodologies, etc.
Psychology is pragmatic in that it can be pulled into court cases, human treatments, etc.
I don’t like HOW a lot of it is done, especially psychiatry… and a lot of it is flawed… but it is a useful science. It’s just not physics. It’s messier. Biology is a science. It’s also messier. Chemistry is the closest to a hard, almost mathematical science, matching psychology in its pragmatism, but just like with biology, not all sciences work well with mathematics.
That’s why there’s so many scientific fields: They don’t all nest neatly into one another.
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Psychology is fundamentally in a tricky bind. The Sciences, theoretically anyway, *should* be able to cover ALL of human knowledge…. somehow.
It’s a basic methodology that’s very flexible and it’s not applied the same way in all of the Sciences because each of the sciences have different goals and foci.
I think Cognitive Psychology has good promise: but even then, how far can brain scans go? They still need to know what they’re looking for, all brains aren’t the same: the stuff is only vaguely in the same places in each of us: nobody’s brain looks like the famous maps that we see.
Plus it needs interpretation. Still, it’s an improvement.
I personally don’t like how psychology and psychiatry are utilized to put kids on medicine so that they sit still, or subtly install hatred of one’s parents for the cause of all of their problems, or how they’re utilized in many court cases.
We’re always looking for that “magic bullet” that explains intent.. that explains cause. Right now we’re hoping magic brain scans wlll do it, but then THAT leads into a problem if we start believing that we have no choice in the matter: talk about excuses for bad behavior.
So, I dunno. It’s messy.
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