On data, methods, and theory: An epistemological evaluation of psychology.

Abstract

Psychology finds itself faced with a paradox owing to epistemological and extraepistemological considerations. The paradox in question stems from the problem of discovery, which some consider to be the life-blood of science (Hanson, 1965). It is argued that psychology, in virtue of its strict hypotheticalism and its faithful adherence to scientific conventionality, has virtually foreclosed the possibility of discovery in its own practice. Moreover, its scientistic character has, ironically, rendered it less scientific. Furthermore, in light of its ambiguous philosophical underpinning, namely, the assumption of positivism and scientific realism, inter alia, psychology has tended to disqualify other competing, perhaps more authentic, epistemologies out of hand; consequently, it has generated very little coherent theory. Psychology's extant failure to disambiguate its fundamental postulates, combined with its relative methodological exclusivity, has rendered it somewhat blind to its past and augurs poorly for its future. Finally, transcendental realism (Bhaskar, 1978) is discussed as possibly a more apposite philosophical substrate which, if understood and faithfully applied, would liberalize psychology epistemologically and render it more philosophically coherent.

Integrating Psychology within the Globalizing World: A Requiem to the Post-Modernist Experiment with Wissenschaft

“…American progress would be a quantitative multiplication and elaboration of its founding institutions, not a process of qualitative change (Ross 1993, p. 104) With such background of socially engrained exceptionalism it is not surprising that the ways in which psychology as a science-as well as a practice-has proceeded over the past century guarantees the split that Toomela (2007a) highlights. It includes the replacement of science by scientism (Shames 1990)-or at least arriving at a pragmatically substantiated mixture of the two (Valsiner 2000). The result for psychology was a limited phenomenological basis for the discipline where the whole richness of human phenomena (e.g.…”

The Hubble hypothesis and the developmentalist's dilemma

“…The strengths and weaknesses of a given discovery methodology can be evaluated only with specific reference to the phenomena and research questions under study. A guiding principle for thinking about discovery methods and strategies should be methodological pluralism, a willingness to develop and embrace whatever methods and strategies are necessary for understanding the phenomena of interest, including categorical, dimensional, idiographic, nomothetic, variable-based, individual-based, cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental, quasiexperimental, historical, and ethnographic approaches (Bergman & Magnusson, in press;Bhatara, McMillin, & Krummer, 1995;Gould, 1986Gould, , 1987Magnusson & Allen, 1983;Magnusson & Bergman, 1988;Maton, 1993;McCord, 1993;Shadish, 1995;Shames, 1990).…”