Idols of the Laboratory

Abstract

REiSMAN has focused attention on the social sciences, particularly with the identification of them, by more entrenched disciplines, as upstart, maverick fields seducing the student from more traditional and unequivo cably honorable studies. He feels that for new fields such an attitude is enevitable but transitional. He cites the case of economics, which has subsequently become re spectable, also anthropology and sociology. Reisman says about the social sciences in gen eral is applicable to psychology in particular. To the English departments, academic psychologists are philis tines, snobs to the educationists, myopies to the phi losophers, and for the natural scientists they are pre tenders to the throne. They must contend with the inter departmental, interdisciplinary, and intracultural flicts described by Reisman; but it is their position as pretenders to the throne that generates a critical diffi culty beyond these conflicts. Psychology is trying assiduously to be truly scientific by direct modeling after the natural sciences. Quantifica tion, meticulous experimental design, and elegant sta tistical techniques are all aimed at the discovery of ubiquitous natural laws with which one can predict human behavior. The phenomenal success of the physical sciences is indeed an incentive, and their ap proach a worthy one to emulate. I am not proposing here to consider the disparity between the influences on people and the influences, for example, on a volume of gas. It is the ramifications of this modeling for the student that concerns me. In the classroom, the emphasis on experimentation has a curious and multidimensional effect. Lectures are often statements supported by a cataloging of experi mental evidence. Discussions are most often debates won by the student who summons the most experi mental support. Reflection, questioning, and hypothesiz ing by the student often trigger the question, What evidence have you? Admittedly contention without sup port can be the nutrient for just plain flabby thinking, but we are dealing in two realms here. In one case the attempt is to answer a question by synthesizing avail able evidence; in the other, the attempt is to ask a question?to put a thought into words, to hear a thought and hear how others reply, to follow implications, to examine assumptions, to relate one thought to other ideas and experiences, to crystalize or diffuse it, to play with it, to integrate it, in short to intellectualize. Here the student of psychology is subject to serious con straint and very little variety. Academic psychologists in their love affair with Science have introduced the for empirical support in the wrong place; and the love affair has turned into a liaison dangereuse. Cer tainly the student needs to develop the discipline and technique of supporting his contentions in a rational and scholarly way. But minute to minute requirement for such empiricizing blurs the distinction between the two modes of investigating indicated above. It leaves little opportunity for the development of the scientist's other role, the theorist. The academic psychologist has created a kind of Cave of the Laboratory. Traditionally higher education has espoused the de velopment of the inquiring and reflective mind. With the empiricist demand the student's philosophizing is cut short, attenuated, minimized, and infused with an implicit (and sometimes explicit) lack of respectability, a lack of scientific rigor. But if one is to be more than a technical specialist in the design, execution, and evalua tion of experiments, he must have the chance to think in this way. One hears a good deal about the heuristic value of theory, but truncated theorizing is not very inspirational. Good theory is claimed to generate em pirically testable hypotheses, but theorizing step by step from what has already been demonstrated seems to me rather limited and ostrich-like. Freedom provides for the consideration of variables that have been unexplored, for the incorporation of other theoretical concepts, and for relating to broader cultural contexts. I seriously doubt that theory building proceeds in this way or that productive psychologists are so constricted by the need for previous evidence. The inadmissability of evidence-free conjecture in the classroom does not seem very fruitful for the development of productive psychologists. The student who tends to follow a line of thought logically, even when not necessarily backed by labora tory evidence, will have to adjust his mode of operation, as well as some of his assumptions about the goals of higher education. The student who believes it is valu able to relate material from the several disciplines he has been exposed to must do the same. As students acquire the appropriate sophistication, one hears fewer and fewer allusions to ideas encountered in courses of literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, and other fields. This sophistication can be marked, very seien 12S