Centrisms, Noncentrisms, and Universal Q

Abstract

I will examine a number of current theoretical systems and issues in logic of science. Then I will suggest why it is that Q can serve those systems that have a substantially different logic of science. My analysis will be confined to psychology, for that is the field I know best; but perhaps some of my remarks will have some relevance to other fields as well. I will begin with a scheme that I found useful in a textbook writing project (Smith 2001). This divides theoretical systems into groups. A system’s placement in a group depends on where the locus of causality is placed in the system. If the organism causes its own behavior, the system is organocentric; if the environment causes behavior, it is envirocentric. If the social order is the center of behavior, it is sociocentric. If the system considers organism- environment relationships to constitute causality, I call it noncentric. Both organocentrism and envirocentrism assume linear causality: A causes B. Noncentrism, in contrast, views causality not as a force or determiner or producer of action but merely as a descriptive term for interdependent events, which replace linear causality: that is, it is not that A causes B but rather that A, B, C, and other components are interactional and reciprocal. The four centrisms comprise different assumptions about causality and exhaust the possibilities (unless one adds mysticism or magic), and these could be reduced to three, for sociocentrism is a type of envirocentrism.