Polarities reflecting conflicts and tensions between approaches to psychology are attributed to an older, mistaken view of the nature of science. Salient features of a new philosophy of science that has developed over the past few decades are identified and their implications for psychology drawn. All science only approaches closure in the laboratory; outside of the laboratory, the world is radically open. Although scientific theory is equally valid in and out of the laboratory, it is not sufficient to explain behavior, nor is it easily applied. Neither natural nor social science has as its central role the explanation and prediction of individual behavior. Just as the application of physics requires engineering technology, explaining the behavior of particular individuals requires not only psychological theory but also situational, biographical, and historical information.

Indeed, Dewey was powerfully influenced by Darwin and was a strong advocate of "experiment," and he often spoke not only of "the mind in use" but also of "control" (Hickman, 1992). But while Dewey was a leading voice in Progressive thought, it is easy to demonstrate that he was a strenuous critic of the sort of scientism so well expressed in the text cited from Leahy (Manicas, 1988; Westbrook, 1991). And, it was easy, but wrong, to think that the differences between positivism and variant forms pragmatism were of little importance to the idea of a "scientific psychology" (Manicas, 1998). Finally, Dewey was committed to an empirical approach to mind and did reject dualist psychology, but his "instrumentalism" was no positivism. Indeed, it is not difficult to show that he played nearly no role in the development of mainstream American psychology. Part I of this essay addresses these confusions. It requires providing a reconstruction of the development of American psychology, if only in sketchy fashion, assaying what Dewey actual did and said, and clarifying some key concepts.What, then of the second irony? Although as I shall argue, Dewey had great hopes for "the new psychology," and, early on in his career, identified himself as a psychologist, he abandoned psychology and came to believe that it ill served what became his primary intellectual goal, that philosophy must address not the problems of philosophy, but the problems of humankind. While he continued to argue that "the nature of all objects of philosophical inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what experience has to say about them," instead of getting answers from "scientific psychology," the problems he was interested in addressing would respond to a new conception of inquiry, work which culminated in his 1938 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. This profound shift is missed primarily because Dewey's theory of inquiry is so fundamentally in opposition to the dominating logical empiricist theory of science, which had by then captured psychology, that it was misunderstood and then ignored. The second irony then is this: Having abandoned even the more refined forms of behaviorism, the cutting edge of current work in psychology is so-called "cognitive psychology." But, remarkably, not only does Dewey's Logic give us prophetic insights into the most fruitful of these approaches, an ecologically oriented, biologically grounded cognitive science, but shows us decisively why "symbolic" AI models must fail. One wonders whether Dewey will be ill served once again. Part II addresses these complicated issues.

This article provides psychologists with an overview of exciting developments in the philosophy of science that have occurred during the last two decades or so and briefly points up their implications for psychology as a science, a discipline, and a profession. These new philo, sophical developments provide a framework for psychology and the social sciences that will help to reconcile conflicting views and approaches within psychology and in its relation to the various biological and social science disciplines.In the monumental Psychology: A Study of a Science, edited by Sigmund Koch (Volumes [1][2][3][4][5][6][1959][1960][1961][1962][1963], one eminent psychologist after another, after many years-or even a lifetime of research-admitted to strong doubts about where they had been and what had been achieved, and some suggested that our most basic assumptions about the nature of psychology as a science and a method had to be questioned. They were right, although at that time new directions were not at all clear.Koch's diagnosis was incisive. He argued that psychology was unique insofar as its institutionalization preceded its content and its methods preceded its problems. . . .The "scientism" that many see and decry in recent psychology was thus with it from the start. . . . From the earliest days of the experimental pioneers, man's stipulation that psychology be adequate to science outweighed his commitment that it be adequate to man.

This 2006 introduction to the philosophy of social science provides an original conception of the task and nature of social inquiry. Peter Manicas discusses the role of causality seen in the physical sciences and offers a reassessment of the problem of explanation from a realist perspective. He argues that the fundamental goal of theory in both the natural and social sciences is not, contrary to widespread opinion, prediction and control, or the explanation of events (including behaviour). Instead, theory aims to provide an understanding of the processes which, together, produce the contingent outcomes of experience. Offering a host of concrete illustrations and examples of critical ideas and issues, this accessible book will be of interest to students of the philosophy of social science, and social scientists from a range of disciplines.

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