Apr 29 2009
Psychology and Non-Specific Science
Last weekend I read — skimmed, really — a book titled, The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene. I was interested in the topics it promised to address, namely human evolution and the role culture plays in it. Although the term “affect hunger” set off a bit of an alarm bell in my brain (what the hell is that?) the heading to the first section, in particular, seemed to hold promise: “Nature and Nurture.”
Psychology is considered a science. Is it? Can be. The book I read was not. Not really. Consider these representative passages:
Affect hunger is the motivating force for sociality, just as thirst motivates us to drink and hunger to eat.
Culture is therefore the shared perception of the universe and its contents, seen as a systematic whole, including the perceptions of self and the delineation of behavioral propriety.
Affect hunger is rooted in biology and emerges with culture. It ties the two together. Affect hunger does not leave the realm of biology, for its very existence plays a role in survival, first by contributing to the central nervous system and second by motivating us to entice the maternal care that is needed to live in a human world.
It seems that in attempting to develop a psychological theory-of-nearly-everything, the author wrote in generalities and employed numerous analogies. Data? There was none I found that directly supported unique, specific claims.
What makes a field of study science is not the subject itself, but how it examines and explains. A classic example is Intelligent Design. Although some people would like to needle it into science classes, just because it purports to be about biological life doesn’t make it a science.
If the book I read wasn’t science, what was it? Philosophy? Meta-psychology? Because I believe in precision I’m going to refrain from slapping any old term on it. Frankly, I don’t know what to call it. Maybe we simple need more words. Specific words.
