/sci/ - Science & Math

[Lyper !!DOAuUa6S9tk No.2437798]

Friend says Psychology = Science
also Psychology is biology.

Tell him how hes wrong.

[OPisafag No.2437809]

Psychology is a science.

And it does have domains which overlap with biology.

U butthurt?

[Anonymous No.2437813]

Science is anything with observation, rigor, theorizing, and proper book keeping. Psychology fits that definition.

[Lyper !!DOAuUa6S9tk No.2437816]

>>2437809
It is not a science at the same level as Chemistry and Biology.
>>2437813
So stamp collecting in books is science?

[Anonymous No.2437821]

>>2437816
>level

[Anonymous No.2437822]

Despite the bashing of Psychology Majors on here it is right now a fairly legit science.

Only in the last 5-10 years has it become that, before it was "do nasty shit to people and distance yourself when said shit hits the fan"

[Anonymous No.2437823]

>>2437816

>stamp collecting
>theorizing

[Anonymous No.2437825]

>>2437813
The question whether or not psychology is science hinges up the "theorizing" point.

Most psychological theory is broad, generic bullshit comparable to, say, astrology.

[OPisafag No.2437826]

>>2437816

>Not a science at the same level

What does that even mean?

[Anonymous No.2437831]

It's psychiatry without math or observation of chemicals.

It's basically the first step of science, abstracting the primitive data. Real scientists would go deeper, because to get any useful results, you need much more statistics than psychology can provide.

[Lyper !!DOAuUa6S9tk No.2437835]

>>2437823
I'm sorry to dissapoint, putin.
>>2437826
It is not an exact science.

[Anonymous No.2437838]

>>2437826
my science is almost three times your science.

[Anonymous No.2437845]

>>2437835
because anything can be "exact"

there is always error in science

[Anonymous No.2437862]

Psychology is a science. Most psychological theories are not scientific.

By that I mean, theories of psychology would be valid scientific theories if they followed the scientific method. Psychology isn't inherently a pseudoscience.

I'd compare it to alchemy. It's a science, but their methods aren't sufficiently scientific for their conclusions to be scientific theories.

[OPisafag No.2437872]

>>2437835

>argues psychology isn't a science
>realizes he's full of shit
>Argues psychology is not an exact science

butthurt

Anyways, psychology does have hard science components. It deals with human growth and development, sensory reception and analysis, and deals itself with abnormal behaviour and mental illness which is quantified in biology and neuroscience, -which yes, psychology plays a big part of.

You just sound butthurt.

[Anonymous No.2437875]

>>2437862
this. It's only pseudoscience due to the limitations of our knowledge. The field itself is the study of systems that has the potential to yield testable scientific theories.

[Anonymous No.2437890]

ITT: butthurt collegefags who think it isn't a science if it doesn't use numbers

Really, get over yourselves.

[Anonymous No.2438015]

>>2437825
That is very true. I personally however was brought over to the positive response side to the question of whether or not psychology is a science after taking a Myers-Briggs personality test. I answered many easy questions that seemed unrelated, but the description of me it produced by the end was spot on.

Keep in mind, I don't hold this to be objective proof of the psychology being a science. It is simply the reason I lean one way versus the other and the effort I put into is proportional to how much I actually care about the matter (which is very little).

[Anonymous No.2438045]

>>2437890
What really pisses me off is when economics majors argue economics is a science because it uses numbers.
>mfw I heard that argument for the first time

Now then - given that science must involve observation, rigor, theorizing, and proper book keeping - is economics a science? I know next to nothing about the field.

[Anonymous No.2438087]

>>2437890
>college
lol as opposed to what? All science is contained within academia; not necessarily in the institution itself, but within journals and the community. And psychology *is* a science, but it's very very soft.

(now on the rest of the topic)

I hate how the media has divided people into 'left and right brain'. Fuck that shit. Yes, there are two fields: humanities and sciences. Humanities are profound and insightful, but in a different way than science, for they lack empiricism. Sciences do not. And if you're going to play in the latter you'd better use the right tools.

The fields are divided into the personalities of people using some goddamn harry potter sorting hat. They're built up by the actions and tools the people use. The hard sciences have been rigorous and defined not because they were populated by super smart beings chosen by god, but because the people in them chose to use the right modes of thinking to develop them.

This is not saying psychology can never be a hard science, but right now it's nearly impossible to say it will ever be. It's very nature exists as a soft science, and there's nothing wrong with that, or else it wouldn't exist and would be called 'biology'. Psychology is very useful, similar to economics, but because it's applied to shaky and risky situations, it will always take hard beatings.

[Anonymous No.2438093]

>>2438087
>*NOT* divided into personalities

big correction

[OPisafag No.2438177]

>>2438087

psychology does use empricism. It makes predictions about behaviours. The myer-briggs personality test is under scrutiny because its predictive power is in some studies shown to be very low. While it's an interesting bit it lacks parsimony and precision. It is overly vague and due to its very generic nature it is not that effective. There are much better predictive theories in psychology, such as those that deal with learning behaviours and conditioning, certain aspects of child psychological development, or observing mental disorders and the like. It's pretty easy to criticise something like predictions of general personality traits due to the natural large variation you're going to encounter between individuals, but a lot harder to argue against, say, lack of norepinephrine or serotonin being the cause of clinical depression in humans and animals.

[Anonymous No.2438267]

>>2438045
I would argue that Economics is a real science. New theories as to the evolution of markets occur on a daily basis. Specifically, the derivatives market. The most important aspect that I believe makes Economics a science is the ability for a computer to replicate set patterns and universal "laws" to accurately predict movements of prices.
If such events can be replicated, then there is a good chance that this is a science of some sort.

[Anonymous No.2438305]

Psychology is a branch of Biology. Science is a method, one which is used by psychologists, so as far as anything can be said to be "a science", psychology qualifies.

The biggest problem psychology has is that people confuse it with psychiatry. The two have a common origin, but are wildly different disciplines: Psychiatry makes no pretense at being "a science" and has an almost anti-empirical bias, but psychology a strictly empirical.

Myers-Brigg is not taken seriously by psychologists, it belongs to Jungian psychiatric mumbo-jumbo and has no empirical basis or predictive power. This is not to say psychometrics in general are worthless: The development of increasingly accurate personality and intelligence tests with strong empirical bases and predictive power stand as one of the most concrete achievements of psychological scientific endeavor.