By Zack Hargrove
Many people got used to referring to psychology studies as informative and reliable answers to the question of the nature of our mind and behavior. However, these answers are not reliable. At least, at this point of human development. Psychology is Pseudoscience… and here is why.
Origins
Just like almost any science, the creation of psychology finds its origin in philosophy. Which is the way of acquiring knowledge and understanding of the world, human beings, and the relationship between man and world. Ultimately, the fruits of this daydreaming hobby have brought humanity clear victories like physics and seeming victories such as psychology. The main objective of psychology is to structure and understand the way of human perception and thinking. However, since its birth (1879), it has not provided us with reliable explanations of their laws.
Over the time it would seem that the presence of gigantic statistical bases and technological progress will make the picture of human consciousness brighter. But despite the fact that the light continued to intensify, no one has yet been able to discern clear contours and lines of the picture of human “consciousness” and deduce unmistakable patterns.
And science works completely the opposite way. Because for instance before we decide to walk off the edge of the cliff, we can predict with 100% accuracy that we will definitely fall down. But if we were to listen to someone’s story – we would not be able to predict if it was true or not with the same level of accuracy.
Nature and Target Audience of Psychology
Imagination is an essential tool of any important and successful scientific work. However, psychology often seduces people to be guided by their imaginations in a wrong and the most convenient way for themselves. Thus, there are hundreds of schools of psychology that may interpret general terminology in its own way.
Essentially, psychology works like a multi-metaphoric and multi-interpreting song. The listener does not need to know the author in order to “understand” it. The author puts a certain meaning into it and the final creation resonates with many listeners and authors. Moreover, it gives them a freedom to twist the meanings however they want (especially, when we talk about “authors”). On the other hand, natural sciences have clear and strict certainty, that does not bow down to anyone’s speculation and works according to only one scenario.
Most people dislike the lack of flexibility in true science. After all, it is much more difficult to establish the cause of the patient’s poisoning than to come up with the idea that his subconscious wants its owner to become a unicorn because of his nightmares.
Ways to Check Whether Anything is Science
Any type of research has universal criteria for determining the degree of its scienticity. For example, we may use the following methods:
- Prediction of the result
Experiment inlines our theoretical prediction
- The method of data adding
The result of the experiment should change proportionally according to the amount of additional input data.
Psychology doesn’t meet the requirements of these basic scientific principles.
Therefore, at this stage of civilization development, it is unwise to use psychology as a reliable tool for getting answers about our consciousness. Thus, sending a person to a psychologist would be the same as sending a person with a broken arm to a surgeon who is not 100% sure if he can locate the bone and furthermore has his own “theory” on bone structure.
That is why psychology is a pseudoscience. And most likely, it will have this status until we learn to create identical copies of humans and their consciousness, and begin to conduct experiments on their behavior within laboratory conditions, which of course goes to counterbalance with modern concepts of ethics that over time becomes more and more unscientifically sensitive.
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