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RAYMOND M. BERGNER, PH.D. |
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COURSES TAUGHT Psychopathology Practicum Theories and Techniques of Counseling Family Therapy
What is Descriptive Psychology?
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An Open Letter from Isaac Newton to the Field of Psychology
To All Members of the Community of Psychologists: I have been following the course of your intriguing field with great interest over this past century and more (I should like to tell you how I have done so, but it is not my business here to delve into matters metaphysical). I had said in my lifetime that I seemed to myself only a boy, playing on the seashore, and directing myself in now and then, finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. I had also said that, if I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. I still believe these statements to be true and so it is with some modesty that I address you today. Perhaps, it must be said, that I would not have been so presumptuous as to do so had I not heard so many of you, and on so many occasions, lamenting that you were "still in search of your Newton." I hope that my thoughts may be of some service. My Hypothesis Regarding Your Central Difficulty To lament that you have not found your Newton is, of course, to state what seems widely agreed in your day: that your young science has not to date arrived at any manner of broadly accepted, comprehensive intellectual framework that accomplishes what I accomplished with my Principia. In that work, you will recall, I created the framework of the system of the physical world, a system of rational mechanics that both comprehended a vast array of hitherto disorganized empirical phenomena and that provided the overarching theory that dominated natural philosophy for centuries thereafter. Looking upon your own field of psychology, the prevailing state of affairs seems akin to that which I encountered when I arrived upon the scene, one of fragmentation. One scientist investigates cognition, another emotion, another personality, another psychopathology, but all in the absence of any manner of comprehensive framework that might lend unity and coherence to all of these disparate enterprises. In the thinking of one Mr. Kuhn in your own time, lacking same, you remain in a stage of development that he characterized as disorganized "pre-science." In this regard, I found of interest the observation of one highly intelligent university student upon entering his General Psychology classroom one Monday morning. Turning to a comrade, this young man exclaimed, "I wonder what entirely different subject we will study this week." At the risk of offending, I should like in this letter to offer my principle hypothesis regarding why your field has not to date arrived at any manner of broadly accepted, unifying theoretical framework, and has not for this reason realized the scientific potential, importance, and respect it would rightly possess. In brief, I believe this reason to lie in the fact that you have attended insufficiently to the pre-empirical matters essential to so much good science. You have understood aright the basic truth that science is ultimately concerned with how things are in the empirical world. However, you have neglected the further truth that often, as in my own case, much nonempirical work must be undertaken if we are to achieve our glittering empirical triumphs. With this central thesis in mind, permit me to present some reminders of how this was so in my own case, and respectfully to proffer some suggestions that may be of benefit to you in your own field of endeavour. My Own Experience In my twenty third year, I was forced, as were all of my fellows, to abandon my studies at Cambridge for fear that I would contract the plague that was then ravaging England. I returned to my family home in Woolsthorpe and soon thereafter found myself quite taken up with the task of seeing what contribution I might make to the then central problems of natural philosophy. Withdrawing to my chambers, I determined to see if I might unify the fragmented, disorganized state of this field. Looking about, I found the conclusions of Galileo regarding the motions of terrestrial objects, the contention of Copernicus that ours was a heliocentric universe, the regularities captured in Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, and many another theory and observation strewn about the landscape of natural philosophy. In taking up my task of constructing a theory that might comprehend all of this, I found it necessary to abandon the dogged empiricism of Aristotle--his absolute abhorrence at uttering a single proposition not in the closest accord with immediate physical observation. I found, in contrast, that I must attend to many matters pre-empirical if I were ever to become able to succeed at those empirical. Indeed, during those sixteen months at Woolsthorpe, I performed not a single experiment nor undertook a single observation in mechanics. Rather, I set about to create the pre-empirical conceptual, mathematical, and theoretical law structures that would prove integral elements in the basic fabric of my ultimate creation: the framework of the system of the physical world. Some Familiar Reminders In considering the place of the pre-empirical in science, some familiar reminders are perhaps in order at the outset. The first of these concerns a decidedly nonempirical discipline that is inextricably woven into the fabric of my own and of most science, that of mathematics. On all learned accounts, in my own time and in your own, mathematics is not itself deemed a science. It is comprised in its entirety, not of empirical, but of a priori propositions. There can be no sensible question of subjecting "2 + 2 = 4" or any other mathematical proposition to empirical test. And yet, this entirely a priori system is of inestimable value in countless scientific enterprises. In my own case, at that time when in the prime of my age for invention I retired to Woolsthorpe, I minded mathematics above all else. In creating my system, I employed Mr. Euclid’s geometry, Mr. Descartes’ invaluable coordinates and analytic geometry, and an entirely new system that I (and not Mr. Leibniz!) created precisely for my purposes, the method of fluxions (what you have come to know as the "calculus"). Without these entirely logical and wholly nonempirical elements, the accomplishment of my task would have been quite simply impossible. Beyond mathematics, but highly related to it, is logic. Like mathematics, logic in all its forms is by common consensus not an empirical science, but is entirely a priori in its structure. Thus, for example, the famous principle of contradiction, "For any proposition p, p and not-p cannot both be true," could never sensibly be the subject of empirical inquiry. Despite its nonempirical nature, however, the employment of valid forms of inference and argumentation is of the utmost familiarity and centrality in science, so familiar indeed that we easily fail to mark its presence. In this connection, it may be recalled that I never observed that gravity extends to the orb of the moon in the manner that I observed, for example, that my famous apple fell to ground. Rather, I logically inferred that, if the acceleration of (and thus the force of gravity upon) terrestrial bodies falling to earth were identical to the centripetal acceleration of the moon moving in its orbit, this would constitute logical grounds for concluding that the forces responsible for these accelerations were one and the same. It was importantly by virtue of a logical conclusion, then, that I made my celebrated claim that gravity extends to the orb of the moon, and indeed to every object in the universe. One final reminder touching both on the matter of logic and on the myriad pre-empirical elements interwoven, almost invisibly, into our scientific practices: this reminder concerns the matter of scientific method. It may be noted that such method, the very heart of what we do as scientists, is in its entirety based on logic and not on empirical finding. If I might illustrate this contention with examples from your own science, no empirical evidence has ever been adduced in support of propositions such as, "This investigation requires a double blind control condition," "Variable A must be held constant between experimental conditions," or "This design calls for use of statistical procedure X." On the Matter of Conceptual Frameworks In order to create the framework of the system of the world, it became apparent that some of the concepts at hand in 1665 would not suffice for my purposes. Thus it was that I set about to formulate a new system of concepts, all precisely defined and related one with another. In doing so, I determined that some of the then existing concepts were quite serviceable; "velocity" and "acceleration" come readily to mind in this regard. However, I found it necessary to formulate several new concepts. Thus it was that I formulated -- dare I say I invented -- the concept of "force." Further, I found it necessary to give new and different meanings to the concept of "mass" if it was to perform its needed function in my system. And so it was that I created, from parts old and new, a conceptual system that could draw the precise distinctions that I needed drawn to accomplish my objectives. Now, it should be clear, to employ the idiom of some twentieth century philosophers (I have kept my eye on them too), that concepts are not "truth eligible." They are neither true nor false, neither verifiable nor falsifiable. One would no more do an experiment to determine, for example, whether a "force" is "any influence that causes a body to be accelerated" than one would to determine if bachelors have wives. Rather, the fundamental question one must always pose of a scientific concept is whether or not it is apt and serviceable. That is to say, does it draw the precise distinction one needs drawn in order to serve the functions one needs served? And, the fundamental question one must ask of any system of concepts is one of coherency. Are the concepts well and logically and rigorously related one with another, and all of this in a way, again, that allows one to accomplish the ends one needs accomplished. And so, bearing on this critically important matter of possessing the most adequate and coherent conceptual system possible, two brief suggestions, both proffered in the spirit of aiding your scientific enterprise. First, in my own case, I found it absolutely indispensable, not only to perform the propaedeutic task of formulating pre-empirically a system of precisely defined and interrelated concepts, but to see to it that they accomplished a most critical objective. They had to be able to provide the means to distinguish explicitly all of the facts and possible facts concerning the motions of (then known) physical bodies. They had to be capable of describing the motions and changes in motion of my famous apple, of Mr. Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits, of Mr. Halley’s comet, and of all other bodies large and small, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, in the entire universe. A simple analogue of my requirement in this regard may be found in the science of colours, wherein the concepts of "hue," "saturation," and "brilliance" allow one both to describe and to distinguish the entire "universe" (if I may express it so) of colours and possible colours. Reverting again to your contemporary idiom, I required a "top down" conceptual system if I were to accomplish my task of providing a truly comprehensive and unifying framework. My second suggestion: I believe you must devote greater diligence to the matter of defining your concepts (or otherwise articulating their meanings; e.g., by parametric analyses, as in the case of colours, or paradigm case formulations, as in the case of your mental disorders). It will not do to continue to say that you do not quite know what some of your central concepts such as "behaviour," "personality," or "psychopathology" mean, and then to go on about the business of claiming that that is what you are studying. In this regard, I was amused by an interchange between Mr. Lyons in your time and an emotion researcher who, when pressed for a definition of "emotion," stated that "an attempt to define emotion is obviously misplaced and doomed to failure." To this, Mr. Lyons responded that, "One is tempted to say that the resulting situation must be like that of sallying forth to study rabbits while having no idea of what is to count as a rabbit". I could not agree more. Bringing these points to bear on the science of psychology, my principle recommendation in this regard would be to resume what seems to have been abandoned on your part as impossible and perhaps even grandiose: the attempt to formulate a grand unified theory of the general domain of persons and their behaviour. And, if I may be so presumptuous as to put forth my own work as a model for such an endeavour, I should like to suggest that your first efforts in this regard might most profitably be devoted to the pre-empirical matter of creating a framework of carefully articulated and systematically related concepts--a conceptual system--and not to the formulation of empirical propositions of intended universal application. In surveying the contemporary landscape of your science, I have noted that a certain Mr. Peter Ossorio seems to have made a most promising effort in precisely this direction with the creation of what he has termed "Descriptive Psychology." On the Matter of Theoretical Laws If my reading of the matter be correct, it appears to me that it has become increasingly customary in your time to direct insufficient scrutiny to the matter of the nature of theoretical law statements. The prevailing opinion seems to be that such statements, or at least statements deducible from them, ought in every instance to be empirically "confirmable" or "falsifiable." However, permit me to direct your attention for a moment to my well-received three laws of motion, and ask you to note if they do not serve a rather different function than this. Then, in full knowledge that your subject matter differs vastly from my own, I shall urge you to consider whether or not this function might not provide some promising directions for the advancement of the science of psychology. I shall use my first law, the "law of inertia," upon which all the rest depends, to begin to illustrate my point. Recall that it states that "Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it." This statement, if regarded as an empirical generalization, is demonstrably false and contrary to all empirical observation (and as such is the last thing that the arch-empiricist Aristotle should ever have thought of saying). There are no perfect vacuums in the universe, nor is there perfectly empty space devoid of all gravitational influence. Thus, no object ever has, nor ever will, travel a rectilinear path at a constant velocity indefinitely. Notwithstanding, like the propositions of mathematics and of logic, this nonempirical statement is of inestimable value in the reckoning of physical events. It describes, not any actual event, but an ideal state of affairs which may, by accounting for deviations from it, be used to great effect in calculating the actual motions of objects. My second law is also nonempirical, but in a way that differs from my first: "Change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed, and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed." In this instance, it is clear that actual events do occur that conform to this description. However, the law is nonempirical in the sense that no empirical finding would ever be taken by the physicist as disconfirming it. As your own Mr. Popper might put the matter, it is not "falsifiable." For, should some body exhibit motion that was not expressible as the resultant of the known forces acting upon it, the physicist will never declare my law disconfirmed, but at every turn will insist that there must be some other force operative. Itself nonfalsifiable, such a conclusion has been the basis for countless empirical discoveries, including that in 1840 of a planet in our own solar system then invisible to the naked eye, Neptune. (Regarding my third law, the law of action and reaction, I shall only note that it is nonempirical in precisely the same way as my second: the seeming absence of an "equal and opposite reaction" on any given occasion would never be counted by the competent physicist as grounds for rejection of the law, but only for further inquiry into as yet unobserved physical forces.) The foregoing being the case, it must be said that, rather than "discovering," it is more correct to say that I "invented" or "created" my three laws of motion. As they are not empirical generalizations, they cannot of course have been empirical discoveries. Perhaps it is most accurate to say that they function as prescriptions to be followed by the physicist in describing and explaining what he or she observes. More precisely, they may be counted conditional prescriptions to the effect that the observed results must be described in accordance with the format provided by the formula. Where these laws themselves are concerned, the empirical question becomes one of where and how these laws may be followed in a non-trivial way and with effective results. In this regard, I am aware that, in the twentieth century, two most successful new paradigms, those of relativity and of quantum physics, have shown my laws no longer to possess effective application in cases of extremely small objects, as well as those moving at extraordinarily high speeds (if observed from outside the frames of those events). In assembling these reminders of the nonempirical character of my own laws, it is not my intention to suggest that all scientific laws be of this character. Clearly, this is not so, Mr. Darwin’s famous assertion being a case in point. It is rather, one might say, to loosen a certain blinder within your field in a manner such that old restrictions might be lessened and new possibilities for theorizing entertained. A brief example may be of use. During the twentieth century, a thesis was advanced within your young science to the effect that "frustration elicits aggression." This thesis, unreflectively regarded as a falsifiable empirical generalization, was ultimately abandoned. Much evidence had accumulated that, while sometimes conforming with observation, it often failed to so accord. Consider, however, an alternative formulation regarding this same matter (one advanced by the selfsame Mr. Ossorio mentioned above): "Provocation by O elicits corresponding (i.e., proportional) hostility by P." Aside from what I regard to be a more linguistically sensitive rendering of the matter, this formulation was put forth, not as a disconfirmable empirical generalization, but as a non-empirical formula that, like my three laws of motion, may be used by scientists and others to explain empirical phenomena. On this formula, if provocation by O is followed by proportional hostility by P, this is straightforwardly intelligible. If it is not so followed, this does not falsify the proposition, but directs the explaining individual to go in search of the other "forces." Unlike myself, Mr. Ossorio is explicit in stating his exceptive conditions or "unless clauses." Thus, his full rendering of the hostility formula is the following: Provocation by O elicits corresponding hostility by P, unless... 1. P has another reason (or reasons) for showing anger toward O or for not showing anger toward O (this is the most straightforward analogue of my own "unless there is another [additive or opposed] force operating"), or... 2. P does not perceive O’s behaviour as the provocation that it is, or... 3. P is unable to express his or her anger in that situation, or... 4. P believes that what he or she did in that situation was a correspondingly hostile response, but in fact it was not, or... 5. some combination of the above states of affairs obtains. In my own time, I observed the movements of bodies. Imposing my pre-empirical frame on the observed world, when such bodies moved in accordance with known forces, that was straightforwardly intelligible and required no further explanation; when they did not, my formulas directed me to search for what was unaccounted. Mr. Ossorio, if I read him aright, is saying: "When one observes anger or hostility that is proportional to the provocation observed, that requires no further explanation (the main clause that provocation elicits corresponding hostility holds without exception); when, however, such an angry response is either absent or represents an over-reaction or an under-reaction, this requires explanation, and one may have recourse to my unless clauses in determining what best fits the observed facts of the case." This formulation, relative to its historical predecessor, captures far more adequately the complexities of the phenomena at issue, and does not warrant abandonment in the face of empirical events inconsistent with its main clause. For these reasons, I hold it to be of far greater scientific merit. Finally, again it may be recalled that what was empirical in my own case was the range of effective application of my theory. As noted previously, events in the twentieth century showed that it did not work either for extremely small objects or for those travelling at speeds approaching that of light. In the same way, it may prove that Mr. Ossorio’s hostility formula encounters domains where, empirically, it does not prove effectively applicable. On the Matter of Empirical Findings In my own case, it was true in every instance that the facts I was able to discover were wholly dependent on the pre-empirical structures I was able to employ: the conceptual system I was able to create, the prescriptive laws I was able to follow, the logical principles I was able to utilize, and the mathematical methods I both invented and applied. Employing all of these nonempirical elements, and bringing them to bear on the empirical findings of Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, and others, I was able to determine that the force that causes the apple to be drawn to earth, and the one that holds the moon in her orbit and prevents her from flying off into space, pretty nearly reckoned, and so deduced that they must be one and the same force. By these same means, I determined the same to be true for other planets and arrived at the law of universal gravitation, demonstrated that the gravitational attraction of any body is proportional to its mass, and calculated that this same attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two bodies. Using these pre-empirical structures, further, Mr. Halley famously predicted the reappearance of his celebrated comet in 1758, countless others uncovered the existence of cosmic entities such as planets and black holes invisible to the naked eye, scientists in the 20th and 21st centuries determined precisely what forces and vectors would be required if their spacecraft were to reach their appointed destinations, and much more. Conclusion I hope that my account of my own case, wherein the pre-empirical was so seamlessly interwoven with the empirical, and so utterly essential to the success of my overall enterprise, has been of some interest and some use to you. It should be clear that history has reserved its highest honours for those sciences that have achieved a state of maturity wherein they have developed an overarching paradigm, and for those individuals who have created these paradigms. If I may be so immodest as to include myself in this pantheon, scientists such as Mr. Einstein, Mr. Darwin, Mr. Maxwell, and myself are remembered, not so much as great experimenters, but as imaginative creators of these new paradigms. In closing, my wish for the science of psychology is that, whether in the person of Mr. Ossorio or some other, you may achieve success in "finding your Newton" and thus your "system of the behavioural world."
Your most obliged and obedient servant, |