Toward Integration: Disciplines, Specialties and Journals

Abstract

Specialization is the way to start a discipline, but it must not become a religion. When rigid, it is an impediment to advancing knowledge: the more rigidly specialized, the less relevant to advancing knowledge. Currently this rigidity seems to be the key problem in social and behavioral studies and in the humanities as well. For example, it seems clear that complete adherence to what psychologists think of as the scientific method has brought the discipline to a virtual standstill. Two examples: “aggression catharsis” and self-esteem. For many years psychologists have been conducting experiments that show that venting anger doesn’t work. This is an extremely important finding because the majority of the public thinks that venting is a good idea: it gets the anger “off your chest.” However, the researchers made the appalling error of confounding venting with catharsis. Being scientistic allows them to ignore the large literature in the humanities that has developed a complex model of catharsis. According to this model, venting is not a form of catharsis. Arousing anger in a theatre audience is meant to let them feel suppressed emotions safely, not cause a riot. The second example is the study of self-esteem. Over the last 50 years there have been more than 20,000 studies using self-esteem scales and other reliable methods, such as systematic social surveys. Yet these scales refuse to predict behavior: the variance has always been under 5 %, practically zero. One of the problems with the some 200 different scales that have been used may concern their validity, rather than their reliability: the scales all confound thoughts (such as egotism) with emotions (such as authentic pride.)