Why Psychology is/is Not Traditional Science: The Self-Referential Bases of Psychological Research and Theory

Abstract

The hyperspecialization, fragmentation, curious faddishness of major research topics, and perceived incommensurabilities of theories and methods in contemporary psychology are often seen as a discipline-specific crisis over our status as a single, identifiable “science.” These features can, however, be understood as the contemporary expression of early discussions by Giambattista Vico and Wilhelm Dilthey on the inherently self-referential basis of psychology, based on its emergent, even paradoxical, combination of the methods of physical science with the underlying themes of the humanities. This defining tension between “explanation” and “understanding” can account for these features of ostensible disunity, along with the unique importance of “ecological validity” in empirical methodology and the roots of theory in largely implicit worldviews and the matrix of ordinary language, quite different from the explicit role of law in physical science. Current neuroscience, although exemplifying “high consensus, rapid discovery” physical science, also illustrates this broader “hermeneutic” perspective.