[ExI] Physics versus psychology

[Richard Loosemore]

Keith Henson wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 6:47 AM, Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I think more of the problem relates back to what someone mentioned earlier:
>> there seems to be no key figure in the history of psychology -- no Newton or
>> Darwin. I actually think it's not so much this as no broadly agreed upon theory
>> of psychology akin to classical mechanics in biology or the plate tectonics.
>> Instead, even with progress over specific problems, there's no general theory --
>> or no general theory widely agreed upon.
> 
> Having watched the field for almost 15 years now, I think the
> evolutionary psychology will become the underpinning for psychology.
> The lack of a major figure isn't fatal.  Plate tectonic doesn't have a
> Newton or Darwin figure associated with it.
> 
> There is quite a list of major figures in the field.

I can't let this pass.

Sorry, but evolutionary psychology is barely even a *science*, let alone 
the underpinning for psychology.

EP contains a vast amount of post-hoc, untestable speculation about how 
the psychological mechanisms might have been pushed around by 
evolutionary pressures.

Analogy:  suppose someone said that the real underpinnings for the 
theory of rivers was a "science" that purported to explain where the 
SHAPE of every river came from, in terms of the push and pull of various 
landscape upheavals like volcanoes, plate tectonics and so on.  For any 
*given* river you could make up a story about how it got its particular 
shape, but in many cases you might simply have to guess the forces that 
shaped it because you simply do not have enough information.

But this would barely be a "science" at all, let alone a science of 
rivers.  Does it explain the actual ecology of rivers?  Their day-to-day 
dynamics?  Month-to-month dynamics?  Year-to-year dynamics?  Their 
ability to absorb toxic hazards?

And the idea of calling that shape-describing "science" the 
"underpinning" for a future, better science of rivers would be laughable.

There, I stuck my neck out.




Richard Loosemore