The big debate: Is Psychology a science?

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Yes and no.
Yes because in a way it's studying the brain and the way humans act and as to why.
But no because psychology is a subject all on its own.
 
Yes it is because of the testing methods for their research is based on empirical and tested evidence that supports/refutes the claim. ALSO, they always seek to find out more answers to their questions so they never leave a question completely answered in order to gain more perspective and answers that add to the validity of their research.

And just to add a little more info: it's recognised worldwide as a science (ie: Bachelor of SCIENCE in Psychology), so there's no arguing with that.
 
Soft science...

requires specific experiments and intellectual study, but their theories can never be truly proved or nullified.
 
Psychology is at it's best, a guessing game. To me a science has set parameters, that each one can be measured over and over again and they will come out the same. You can't do that with humans. Each is going to come out differently Even the way they try to study people varies from therapist to therapist. One of the biggest problems that psychologists have in studying people is that they are looking at one part of the body and trying to make full assumptions about that person on just that one part of the body, the head. But that head is attached to the rest of the body and the body can be sending messages to the brain that we don't see but that someone 'reads' as being all within the brain. The brain is only the receiver of all messages from the body and if those messages are of pain, we show it on our foreheads, they call us depressed, they give us something to take away the depression but they miss the whole point of where the pain is coming from and how to fix the pain itself. So in that regard they have a lot to learn about what they are even teaching and using as working models.
 
People who specialize in psychology can tell you the answer to this easily: yes, no question about it.

Psychology actually has a strong base in biology and many mental illnesses have theorized neurological causes. These things are very observable. To not be a science, psychology would have to study something that one cannot observe or measure. But you can and psychologists have to use the scientific method like any other scientist. Psychologist use systematic methods to study the mind, which includes both subjective and empirical observations. Some of them are less "scientific" than others, like surveys, interviews, questionnaires...but these are only in certain fields of psychology like behavioral psychology or social psychology.

Yes, it is studying something that we meager humans will never be able to fully comprehend (nor would we really want to); but so is many other forms of science. In this natural world, in this big universe, we humans can't really understand everything or find everything. It's foolish to assume you can. All science is limited by this fact...the fact that we will never be able to really know everything about what we are studying. So psychology is no different from astronomy, zoology, etc.

And yes, psychology as a pretty big margin for error seeing as though when observing mental illnesses, you're relying on a lot of subjection from both yourself and the person you're interviewing (though that's only in certain branches of psychology). But again, so does every other science. Can you really be sure that the equation for gravity is really Fg = G*m1*m2/r^2? Can you really be sure that an atom is the smallest molecule? Can you really be sure that the "planet" you're observing thousands of lightyears away is really there? The answer is no. These are all observations based on a gathering of data that can easily be proven wrong at any point. A big part of science is realizing that nothing you may come up with is truly "fact", but merely theoretical.

So, if we are to assume that psychology is not a science because one assumes its subjective, theoretical, and studying a subject that will never be fully understood...then we would have to assume that there simply is no such thing as science. If something is a science because it uses the scientific method to gather empirical data and it studies a tangible, observable subject...then how is psychology NOT a science?
 
no. It's all just a guessing game. There is no solid proof of any of it - just theories. There is no test to see if someone is suffering a mental illness it is all subject to the drs opinion.
 
Is science not something you can measure and proof? Psychology is something mysterious like believing in God. I do but how do I proof it to other people, its a feeling. What works for some people might not work for others. What do you think yourself?
 
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